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FROM   THE   LIBRARY  OF 
REV.   LOUIS    FITZGERALD    BENSON,   D.  D. 

BEQUEATHED   BY  HIM  TO 

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PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


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si:ori;L 


OUR    LIBERAL    MOVEMENT 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


http://archive.org/details/sequelourlibOOalle 


SEOU  E 


ro 


Our  Liberal  Movement' 


JOSEPH    III.NkN    ALLEN 

LATE    LECTURER    ON  \     in 

HARVARJ  ll  V 


BOSTON 

ROBE RTS    BROTH E RS 

1897 


Copyright,  1897, 
By  Joseph  Henry  Allen. 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS. 


I.     'I'm:  Old  School  and  its  Worm 
II.     German  [rtluenci 
I II.     Fob  i  i   Vi  kRfl  Later  .     . 

I  V.       I'm  DERK     QeNRI     1 1  i  i-,i 

V.        ><  -Ml       \<  'I    EfOEH      Ml    M'  'KM.- 

James  Freeman  Clarke 
William  Greeoieaf  Eliot 
Thomas  Starr  King  . 
John  Weiss     .... 
I      lerick  Set*  mai 
Thomaa  Hill  . 

William  Francis  All.-n  . 
Samuel  Longfellow  . 
Edmund  Burke  Willson 
<  )cta\  in-  Brooks  Frothingban 

David  Atkins  Wasson  . 


1 


11 

:<7 

llM) 

Hi:; 
108 
li:. 
120 
132 

lm 
IP. 
162 


SEQUEL  TO 
OUB    LIBERAL    MOVEMENT." 


THE   OLD   >■  HOOL   AND    its   WORK.1 

OtiTE  3  i  William  Henry  Furness,  then  in 

his  ninety-fourth  year,  —  the  widest  known, 
the   inn-:  ted,  and    the  best   beloved    name 

among  as,     -  was  appointed  th  r  of  this 

sion.     It  was  an  act  of  confiding  trust  in  his  per- 
petua]  youth;   for  of  him  that  may  more 

literally  than  of  any  othei  whom  we  have  known, 
which  Elomei  m  his  tongue 

Rowed  bj ch  more  Bweet  than  1.  I  already 

two  generations  of  mortal  men  v. 
while  be  Btood  as  a  prince  among  the  third."  And, 
when  some  of  us  beard  him  at  the  conference  in 
Washington,  four  months  Utter,  we  Listened  to  a 
voice  as  resonant  and  firm,  it'  not  quite  bo  mellow,  as 
when  h<i  spoke  to  ns  in  his  earlier  prime. 

li  i-  i  will  easily  understand,  with  much 

diffidence  and  reluctantly  that   I   have  consented  to 
occupy  the  hour  which  that  voice  should  have  filled; 

1  An  address  before  the  Alumni  <>f  the  Harvard  Divinity  S 
June  23,  i  - 

1  1 


Z  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

and  I  did  not  promise  to  undertake  the  task  until  it 
proved  impossible  to  be  undertaken  by  some  one  at 
once  more  nearly  contemporary  with  Dr.  Furness 
and  more  closely  associated  with  his  earlier  life- 
work.  Besides,  it  was  thought  fitting  that  this 
should  be  an  occasion  not  only  or  chiefly  of  personal 
commemoration,  but  for  brinoirm  into  a  single  view 
the  work  of  an  entire  period,  which  the  passing 
away  of  that  one  life  seems  suddenly  to  have  thrown 
back  in  the  perspective,  and  to  have  made  a  scene  in 
history  by  itself. 

Two  circumstances,  which  I  will  not  dwell  on,  set 
this  view  of  our  topic  in  special  relief  to-day,  —  the 
recent  passing  away  of  so  many  of  the  "  Old  Guard  " 
among  our  ministers,  making  a  death-list  in  the  last 
eighteen  months  of  ten,  whose  average  age  was  con- 
siderably over  eighty,  and  the  average  length  of 
their  ordained  service  nearly  sixty  years  ; 1  and,  sec- 
ond, the  completion  of  seventy  years  since  the  build- 
ing and  consecration  of  this  Divinity  Hall  in  which 
we  are  now  met.  And  I  may  add  that  the  reason  of 
my  speaking  is  that  what  I  shall  offer  is  in  the  way 
of  personal  testimony  rather  than  an  historical  sur- 
vey simply  or  a  general  essay,  since  every  name  I 
shall  have  to  recall  in  these  memories  is  that  of  one 
toward  whom  I  have  stood  in  some  direct  personal 

1  Their  names  in  the  order  of  seniority  are  :  Thomas  T.  Stone 
(1801-95);  W.  H.  Furness  (1802-96);  J.  H.  Morison  (1808-96); 
H.  A.  Miles  (1809-95) ;  G.  W.  Briggs  (1810-95)  ;  F.  W.  Holland 
(1811-95)  ;  E.  B.  Willson  (1820-95)  ;  J.  F.  Moors  (1821-95)  ;  0.  B. 
Frothingham  (1822-95);  Augustus  Woodbury  (1825-95).  Dr. 
Stone  had  been  associated  with  our  body  since  1846.  The  others 
were  all  members  of  the  Harvard  Divinity  School. 


ANDREWS    NOR! 

relation  01  n  ratitude,  affection,  kindred,  or 

mutual  help. 

The  history  of  this  School   properly  begins  with 

the  time  when  a  regular  post-graduate  course  of  the- 

was  established  here  under  the  presidency  of 

hi-.  Kirk  land.     The  class  of  1811,  I  believe,  was  the 

first  to  which  t  hi-  was  open.     But  the  Divin- 

School  apart  from  the  College  was  not  formally 

lized   till   1819,  with  the  appointment  of  An- 

drews  Norton       P  1   Literature.     [I 

will  be  proper,  therefore,  to   begin  our  Burvey  by 

considering  briefly  what   that  first  appointment  sig- 

nified  in  the  teachings  and  character  of  the  SchooL 

The  date  here  given  >•  member,  just 

twenty  years  before  Pi  N-     ton  led  the  way  in 

vehement  prol  I  rinst  the  newer  Liberalism  her- 
alded in  Emerson's  Divinity  9  >ol  address,  which 
he  denounced  as  "the  latest  form  of  infidelity." 
Here  it  is  difficult  for  us  of  a  youuger  generation 
to  do  justice  to  his  position,  or  perhaps  even  to 
understand  it.  It  is  one  of  the  tragedies  of  the  in- 
tellect ual  life  when  a  Bine  >re  and  able  lead 
opinion  finds  his  maturest  work  already  outgrown 
before  it  has  reached  its  final  shape  by  the  advance 
neral  thought,  and  outlive  Mr.  Morton  did 
for  fifteen  years,  his  own  cordial  sympathy  with 
that  advance.  Till  he  gave  up  his  professorship  in 
his  was  unquestionably  the  dominating  mind 
in  this  school,  which  was  largely  guided  by  his  in- 
fluence till  the  new  ti<ki  of  opinion  had  well  set  in. 

Even  then  his  Bharpest  opponents  spoke  —  Tl dore 

Parker,  for  example,  spoke  to  me  —  with  a  singular 


4  THE    OLD    SCHOOL   AND   ITS    WORK. 

deference  of  his  unchallenged  scholarship  and  rare 
mental  ability.  We  are  apt  to  think  of  him  as 
merely  a  defender  of  Unitarian  opinion  on  its  nega- 
tive side,  in  "  a  statement  of  reasons  for  not  believ- 
ing "  certain  articles  of  the  popular  creed,  or  else  as 
holding  an  advocate's  brief  for  "  the  genuineness  of 
the  Gospels,"  which  he  maintained,  with  laborious 
erudition,  in  an  argument  whose  sense  has  grown 
obsolete  and  even  unintelligible  in  the  light  of  later 
criticism,  —  nay,  was  already  clearly  seen  by  many 
to  be  so  before  the  argument  appeared  in  a  printed 
book.  I  remember  a  conversation  with  him  in 
1850,  in  which  this  topic  (it  is  true)  was  not 
touched  upon,  but  which  left  on  my  mind  the  im- 
pression of  a  certain  intellectual  loneliness,  if  not 
despondency,  which  one  grieves  to  find  in  a  spirit 
so  brave,  clear,  and  widely  accomplished  as  his.  He 
was  then  sixty-four  years  old.  But  we  should 
think  rather  of  the  work  he  did  at  twenty-six :  the 
strenuous  and  tonic  quality  he  gave  then  to  the 
earlier  liberalism  in  the  "  General  Eepository  ;  "  his 
great  service  as  the  pioneer  of  a  wider  literature 
and  a  higher  criticism  among  us  in  the  "  Select 
Journal"  conducted  by  him  and  that  accomplished 
scholar,  his  friend,  Charles  Folsom  ;  the  welcome  he 
gave  to  some  of  the  purest  and  tenderest  voices  of 
the  modern  muse ;  and  the  share  he  has  contributed, 
as  a  true  religious  poet,  to  our  own  treasuries  of 
devotion,  in  a  few  hymns  that  are  among  the  very 
finest  of  their  class.  And  we  should  remember, 
too,  the  filial  respect  and  gratitude  with  which  his 
pupils  in  theology  owned  their  debt  to  his  grave  and 


ANDREWS   NORTON. 

scrupulous  criticism,  while  th  i  —  as 

Dr.  Furnesa  did  —  to  be  giving  it  a  turn  that  would 
cost  him  many  a  pang.     Surely,  it  was  no  ill  augury 
for  the  work  of  this  School  that   forelei 
first  years  this  veteran  scholar  and  critic  guidi 
teachings  by  his  master  mind. 

Though  devoted  from  his  youth  to  the  study  of 
theology  and  the  service  of  the  higher  intelli 
lif«',  and  though  himself  a  man  of  strong  religious 
conviction,  Mr.    Norton  was  the  onlj   professor  in 
this  school,  down  to  the  appointment  •  Lbbot, 

who  had  uot  actually  occupied  a  pulj.it.     Possibly, 
thi>  may  have  been  from  disl  natural  tem- 

per iment,  <>r  relu  quiet  and 

still  air  of  delightful  studies"  in  which  his  l"t  was 
at  any  rate,  a  mark  of  his  sensitive 
independence,  perhaps  of  a  certain  proud  humility, 
that  he  always  refused  the  academic  title  which  is 
conventionally  held  proper  for  a   theological   pro- 
:  :  he  was  never  M  1  factor "  or  "  Reverend,"  to 
end  of  his  days.     Tip  —  '  titles  he  held  the  due 
only  of  ordained  workers  in  the  ministry.     A  keen 
critic  he  always  v«  have  heard,  of  the  pulpit 

exercises  of  other  men,  younger  men,  his  pupils 
.  and  if  they  were  sometimes  more  daunted 
than  helped,  as  I  fear  they  were,  by  the  severe 
standard  he  judged  them  by,  no  doubt  they  would 
feel  the  value  of  it  afterward.  I'  n  -  a  man  of  his 
own  training,  we  must  remember,  George  Ripley, 
who  stood  «'ut  against  him  boldest  and  longest  on  n 
question  touching  the  foundations  of  religious  belief ; 
and,  whatever  else  his  .-indents  learned  or  failed  to 


6  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

learn,  I  am  sure  he  taught  them  respect  for  perfect 
integrity  and  honest  candor  of  the  spoken  word. 

The  next  influence  comparable  with  Professor  Nor- 
ton's in  amount  and  depth  for  its  effect  on  the  life 
nurtured  here  was,  I  suppose,  that  of  Henry  Ware, 
Junior,  a  man  of  radically  different  mental  temper, 
but  absolutely  harmonious  in  conviction  and  aim. 
More  than  any  other,  I  should  say,  he  was  during 
his  twelve  years'  service  the  pastor  and  apostle  in 
his  calling,  —  in  a  very  special  sense,  what  Matthew 
Arnold  so  finely  says  of  Emerson,  "  the  friend  and 
aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  He  was 
put  and  sustained  in  the  place  of  service  for  which 
he  was  felt  to  be  singularly  fit,  by  the  special  con- 
tributions of  friends  who  created  that  place  ex- 
pressly for  him.  He  was  a  modest  but  excellent 
scholar,  a  man  of  very  precious  and  tender  pastoral 
experience,  of  poetic  gift,  also,  who  would  (his 
brother  said  of  him)  have  desired  more  than  any- 
thing the  vocation  of  a  poet,  shy  of  native  tempera- 
ment, and  often  slow  of  utterance,  yet  capable  of 
fervent,  ready,  direct,  and  incisive  speech,  of  sym- 
pathies warm,  wide,  quick,  generous,  and  helpful, 
and,  as  much  as  any  man  we  have  ever  had  among 
us,  having  what  we  may  call  the  very  genius  of 
piety,  —  a  choice  gift  which  he  shared  with  a  few 
such  men  as  Channing,  Furness,  Gannett,  Dr.  Hos- 
mer,  and  Ephraim  Peabody.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  associate  with  his  influence  one  very  noble  phase 
of  the  life  that  has  gone  forth  from  this  School :  I 
mean  a  certain  devoted  and  heroic  consecration  to 
a  ministry  of  holiness,  which  I  might  illustrate  by 


HENRY    WABB,    JUNIOR. 

maiiv  examples,  but  will  here  mention  only  tw.>. — 
our  own  "Apostle  Eliot"  <»f  St  Louis,  and  that 
beloved  and  valiant  u  saint  of  all  the  humanities/' 
Samuel  Joseph  May,  —  men  alike  in  their  clear 
insight  and  great  moral  courage,  though  e\ 
wide  apart   in  the  lim  trvioe  they  were  sever- 

ally true  to.     This  quality  in  ting  we 

ciate  as  distinctly  with  the  nam.'  of   W 
connect  i<  -  order  of  intellects  e  with  those 

oi  Norton,  Palfrey,  and  Noyes.  I  wish  there  were 
time  i"  speak  fitly  of  them  all.  But  here  I  must 
deal  with  currents  of  influence,  not  with  names 
of  men;  and  there  will  be  Borne  dow  present  who, 
with  a  certain  filial  gratitude,  will  alv.  ociate 

the  particular  influence  I  Bpeak  of  with  him  who 
died  of tener  than  any  other  1  can  remember 
by  an  epithet   unusual  among  us,  and  very  precise 
in  its  application,  as  "  the  sainted  W 

His  name  reminds  us,  again,  that  tins  has  never, 
as  its  proper  title,  been  called  a  school  of  Theology, 
but  a  school  of  1  >i\  urn  v.  It  may  be  well,  just  here, 
\  a  word  of  what  this  designation  seems  to 
imply.  I  will  do  it  by  dwelling  a  moment  on  an 
aspect  of  this  School,  or  of  tin*  Life  sheltered  ami 
trained  in  it,  which  we  sec  perhaps  most  distinctly 
when  we  Look  hack  t<>  those  years  among  the 
"thirties,"  or  a  little  earlier,  ami  recall  the  men 
whose  life-work  was  inspired  ami  Bhaped  here  then, 
wlm  make  our  best  illustration  of  the  characteristic 
thing  here  done.  Representative  names  are  those 
of  Ephraim  ami  Andrew  Peabody,    I  Ripley, 

Samuel  Atkins  Eliot,  Jam      1:     iniiii  Clarke,  Wil- 


8  THE    OLD    SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

liam  Henry  Charming,  Henry  Whitney  Bellows,  and 
Theodore  Parker.  I  choose  these  from  a  long  list, 
not  merely  for  their  eminence,  but  for  the  variety 
of  gifts  they  showed.  Certainly  it  would  not  he 
easy  to  devise  any  one  type  or  descriptive  name 
that  would  fairly  include  them  all.  But  they  seem 
to  me  to  illustrate  very  well  a  feature  in  this  School, 
which  may  possibly  distinguish  it  favorably  among 
some  other  schools  more  famous  and  more  richly 
endowed.  The  complaint  always  made  of  it  in  its 
earlier  years,  was  its  poverty  of  endowment.  Two 
men,  it  was  said  by  way  of  reproach,  were  made  to 
do  the  work  of  five  or  six :  the  first  thing  wanted, 
we  were  incessantly  told,  was  a  wealthier  endow- 
ment. But  to  such  complaint  I  should  always 
reply  that  we  must  not  "  think  that  the  gift  of  God 
can  be  purchased  with  money."  The  essentials  of 
the  higher  education  are  a  consecrated  will,  intel- 
lectual opportunity,  a  wide,  buoyant,  and  elastic 
atmosphere  of  thought,  sufficient  guidance  —  but 
not  too  much  —  in  the  wide  wilderness  of  learning, 
and,  above  all,  great  mental  leisure  and  freedom, 
with  great  joy  and  wealth  of  spiritual  companionship. 
And  it  may  be  fairly  questioned  whether  all  these 
may  not  be  had  at  their  best  in  the  inverse  ratio 
of  that  elaborated  equipment  which  is  often  more  a 
burden  than  a  help  to  the  nobler  intellectual  life. 
Even  if  we  suppose  poverty  in  such  things  to  have 
its  difficulties,  yet  it  is  through  difficulties,  not  fa- 
cilities, that  men  win  the  temper  fittest  for  their 
work  in  life. 

But  I  am  not  speaking  here  of  difficulties,  —  here, 


•L    <»f    DIVINITY. 

where  university  life  Lb  overburdened  with  I 

of  opportunity.     I  -peak  only  of  the  two  essential 

things,  —  large  freedom  oi  leisure 

of  companionship,  —  these,  with  the  motive  and  the 

guidance  that  are  just  enough  for  the  best  as 

that  freedom  and  that  Leisure.     1 1 

to  me  that  we  Buffered  any  serious  Loss  in  that  "ur 

teachers  were  only  two,  when  those  two  were  Senry 

and  Dr.  Noyes.     I  am  not  Bpeaking  here  of 
tli  •  theological  department  in  a  university,  —  which 

(no  doubt)  a  wide  variet  ecial  Learning, 

—  but  of  a  Divinity  School  such  as  this  was 

where  the  first  1 d  is  personal  influence 

and  inspiration,  restrained  but  not  dominated  by 
critical  erudition.  And  I  am  not  saying  that  this  is 
a  better  thing  than  the  other,  but  only  that  it  was 
a  good  thing  in  its  way  to  have,  while  we  were 
waiting  for  the  other. 

Nay,  for  the  time  we  have  in  view  it  may  even  be 
contended  that  it  than  the  other  would 

have  been  if  we  could  have  had  the  other  thru. 
The  Liberal  movement,  which  in  a  way  it  has 
the  business  of  this  School  to  guide  and  help,  is  a 
movement  even  Less  of  thought  than  it  is  of  Life,  a 
movement  even  Less  of  theology  than  of  pra 
conduct.  And  at  that  time  its  aim  and  method 
precise  than  now.  The  questions  that 
coming  up  had  more  to  do  with  the  vague 
idealism  which  we  term  u  Transcendental "  than  they 
had  with  the  very  precise  and  tangible  scientific 
problems  of  the  present  day.  Nobody  knew, for  one 
thing,  or  could  possibly  BUSpect,  how  far  the  advance 


10  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND    ITS   WORK. 

of  criticism  would  affect  our  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  or  how  far  the  advance  of  natural  science 
would  invade  and  alter  our  very  conception  of 
human  duty  and  destiny.  At  such  a  time,  with  an 
astounding  amount  of  shallow  and  restless  radicalism, 
with  appalling  questions  of  society  and  politics  loom- 
ing, too,  in  the  horizon,  it  was  of  far  more  account 
to  the  student  that  his  mental  atmosphere  should  be 
elastic  and  wide  than  that  his  mental  training  should 
be  carried  on  within  rijnd  lines.  At  such  a  time 
there  is  an  inconvenience  in  being  committed  to  too 
sharply  defined  opinions.  Opinion,  to  be  worth 
anything,  must  be  long  held  in  solution  in  a  medium 
(so  far  as  may  be)  transparent  and  colorless,  and 
must  crystallize  very  slowly  about  some  nucleus  of 
positive  conviction,  which  is  the  gift  not  of  logic,  but 
of  life.  No  opinion  that  was  ever  held,  I  should 
think,  was  more  sincerely  held,  more  wholesome, 
more  manly,  conducive  whether  to  a  purer  piety  or 
a  more  devoted  humanity  than  the  form  of  super- 
naturalism  in  which  Norton  and  Ware  and  their 
whole  generation  were  trained ;  yet  in  the  next  gen- 
eration it  was  destined  to  be  completely  outgrown, 
while  they,  as  honest  men  as  ever  lived,  could  never 
learn  or  endure  to  see  it  so.  That  was  in  one  way 
a  great  pity,  causing  as  it  did  painful  misunderstand- 
ings and  great  loss  of  moral  force.  But  it  w^ould 
have  been  a  far  greater  pity  if,  in  the  temper  of  that 
day,  there  had  been  here  an  equipment  of  learning 
that  should  compact  that  half-way  view  into  a  full- 
grown  system  and  an  intellectual  creed. 

From  that  worse  evil,  it  may  be,  the  very  poverty 


ITS   METHODS   OF   STUDY.  11 

of  this  School  protected  as.  At  least,  there  was  no* 
a  corps  of  teachers  aumerous  enough,  or  well  enough 
armed  with  modern  applii  Learning,  to  tie  us 

down  by  exactions  of  routine-work  to  the  n 
an  elaborated  method  in  theology,  which  we  should 
see  now  to  be  painfully  inadequate.  I  think  that, 
on  the  whole,  a  healthier  growth  has  come  of  it  than 
if  there  had  been.  I  do  not  easily  associate  such 
wealth,  vigor,  variety,  and  independence  in  tl 
ligious  lifi  ■  til   in  the  names  I 

little  while  ago,  —  take  only  whal  is  signified  to  as 
in  the  last  i  wo,  Bellow  -  and  P  i  •  i .  names  that 
belong  to  the  period  next  before  my  own,  —  with 
thr  Btricter  training  appropriate  to  a  purely  scientific 
theology  that  is  up  to  the  present  standard  i 
would  mean  a  longer  time  of  pupilage  than  is 
for  the  ;  Mian,  —  at   any  rate,   longer   than 

would  bave  been  possible  to  us  then.  I  give  my 
testimony  for  what  it  is  worth;  but  I  know  that, 
for  one,  the  best  piece  of  work  I  did  while  here  was 
entirely  outside  all  school  courses,  actual  or  conceiv- 
able: it  was  an  attempt  to  master  the  principles  of 
the  modern  scientific  method,  with  such  guidance  as 
could  be  had  then,  in  the  st-vm  thick  volumes  of 
Whewell  and  John  Smart  Mill,  aided  by  some  light 
in  pure  mathematics  from  my  near  friend  of  those 
Thomas  Hill,  and  brightened  by  a  good  deal 
of  talk  with  President  Walker,  who  was  so  generous 
of  his  shrewd,  wise,  kindly,  and  helpful  companion- 
ship to  us  younger  men.  This  may  serve  as,  if  not 
a  brilliant  yet  a  useful  example  of  what  I  Buppose 
was  very  common,  —  the  accidental  and  incidental 


12  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

benefit  that  befell  from  the  less  formal  methods  of  a 
Divinity  School  in  that  earlier  day. 

I  will  now  attempt  to  recall  one  or  two  aspects 
of  the  field  where  our  life-work  lay,  for  which  we 
had  been  preparing  under  such  influences  as  I  have 
described.  The  date  I  have  here  in  mind  is  1840, 
which  marks  the  end  of  the  period  spoken  of  hith- 
erto and  the  beginning  of  that  in  which  I  became 
a  sharer  in  its  tasks.  Our  life-work  was  to  be 
found  in  that  part  of  the  Lord's  vineyard  for  which 
we  were  in  training,  to  dress  it  and  to  keep  it,  every 
man  according  to  his  several  ability. 

The  soil  of  that  vineyard  was  just  then  remarka- 
bly fertile  in  "  isms,"  which  grew  in  it  like  weeds. 
These  I  would  define  as  so  many  off-hand  creeds, 
of  one  article  apiece,  which  the  believer  in  it  ac- 
cepted with  a  certain  romantic  faith,  and  spent 
his  life  in  thrusting  upon  the  consciences  of  his 
fellow-men.  All  these  more  or  less  abortive  creeds 
had,  I  think,  an  aim  more  mundane  than  the  curi- 
ous other-worldliness  which  has  come  into  being 
since  the  famous  "  Chardon  Street  Conference," 
where  they  swarmed  preparatory  to  taking  flight, 
—  where  I  witnessed  a  great  twinkling  and  sputter- 
ing of  new  lights,  some  of  them  set  rather  awk- 
wardly in  their  candlesticks,  and  not  nearly  so 
neatly  trimmed  as  hotly  burning.  This  took  place, 
we  must  remember,  while  Brook  Farm  was  an 
enterprise  just  set  on  foot,  and  five  years  before 
the  first  advent  of  modern  spiritism.  Some  of 
those  embryo  schemes  were  of  a  certain  vague  but 
high   idealism,   and   were    the    precursors    of    the 


FORMS   OF   RADICALM  13 

]       sophy  and  Christian  S  a  day.     S 

met  the  social  problems  of  the  time  in  a  j 

i  in  I  heroic  temper,  testified  in  brave  cam- 
paigns of  conscience,  Buch  as  Christian  socialism, 
the   temp  rm,  and  (most    chivalro 

all)  the   " old-school n   antislavery   crusada     Some 
not   much   more   than   the   whim 

.  —  the   no-Sabbath,   no-property,   n 
eminent,   no-resistance   leaguers.     But,  io 
they  were  u  sports,"  or  ofl  growth  of 

modern  liberalism,  suddenly   become   com 

f,  and  without  the  experience  of  that   twofold 
discipline  which  1  jrnly  held  them  in 

during  the  half-century  which  has 
the   disciplim  b,  painfully   learned   thi 

the  struggle  that  cam-  in  our  Civil  W  • 

with  thai  rather  chaotic  chapter  which  describes 
our  political  performance  Bince;  the  discipline  of 
science,  —  for   the   time    I  -    twenty 

years  before  D  rwin  had  brought  home  to  the 
common    mind   tl  of    evolution    in    natural 

things,  or  Spencer  had  expounded  th<  I  law 

which  has  greatly  chastened  and  chilled  the  i 
lutionary  temper  bo  vagraut  and  rampant  then. 
Aml.it  must  be  remembered,  all  these  esca] 
of  moral  knight-errantry  took  a  shape  io  this  com- 
munity, with  its  Puritan  antecedent  . 
sternly  practical,  and  even,  in   a  intensely 

religious.      Each,   in    its   fashion,  If   about 

taking  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by  violence;  each, 
no  doubt  sinccrdv,  deemed  itself  the  one  indis- 
pensable gateway  to  the  New  Jerusalem,  the  earthly 


14  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

paradise.  It  may  be  easily  seen,  then,  what  a 
warp  must  have  been  given  to  the  minds  in  train- 
ing for  their  life-work  here.  Those  minds  had 
chosen  their  vocation  because  it  represented  to 
them  the  ideal  side  of  life.  They  were  for  that 
very  reason  susceptible  to  this  chaotic  clamor  of 
many  tongues,  and  fascinated  by  some  one  or 
another  phase  of  that  ethical  ideal,  which  glances 
in  facets  as  multitudinous  as  a  cut  and  polished 
gem.  How  would  the  sober  tradition  of  their  re- 
ligious culture  be  invaded,  how  would  the  grave 
lessons  of  their  theological  or  philosophic  training 
be  beguiled,  by  these  so  many  voices  from  the 
world  about,  when  not  one  of  those  voices,  as  their 
own  Scripture  itself  assured  them,  was  without 
its  proper  signification  ?  Who  knew  whether  it 
might  not  be  the  one  voice  to  show  you  or  me  the 
particular  path  it  was  ordained  for  us  to  follow, 
forsaking  every  other  ? 

In  looking  through  the  catalogue  of  these  years, 
we  see  how  large  a  proportion  of  those  educated 
here  have,  found  their  real  vocation  in  some  other 
thing  than  what  they  seemed  to  have  chosen.  Life 
is  so  different  from  our  theories  and  plans  of  life  ! 
The  liberal  ministry,  as  we  have  sought  it  or  ac- 
cepted it,  has  been  often  said  to  be  like  certain 
localities,  which  are  good  to  grow  up  in,  but  par- 
ticularly good  to  emigrate  away  from.  This  may 
be  a  drawback  in  a  profession,  or  in  the  education 
that  prepares  one  for  a  profession ;  but  it  need  not 
be  a  disaster  or  a  reproach.  It  is  a  special  glory  of 
the  life  educated  here  that  it  has  turned  so  easily 


JOHH    GORHAM    PALFREY.  15 

to  so  large  a  variety  of  outside  work.     Among  its 
ministers  of  the  Word  there  have  been  a  fair  pro- 
portion  better  known    to   the    public   as    teachers, 
historians,   artists,   or    p 
public    charities,   literary   editors    and    <nn 
correctors  of  the  press;  some  few  as  Boldiers 
rant  in  the  Geld,  or  men  ol  high  authority  in  public 
b  tat  ion.     All  this  was  in  answer  to  tin-  demand  of 
a  restless  time,  a  great  national  crisis,  an  immature 
civilization,  a  r-hopeful  community. 

k  was  a  part  of  the  work  this  School  had 
a  gift  to  tin*  world  not  inferior,  perha] 
imposing  a   record  of   ecclesiastics,  scholiasts,  and 

Bow  could  I  better  illustrate  this  feature  of  its 
history  than  by  the  name  of  that  noble  friend  of 
my  earlier  studies  and  my  after  ministry,  —  John 
Qorhani    Palfi  isor    in    this 

School  I      As   the   successor   of    Buckminster   and 
Everett,   he  had  digni6ed   a   pulpit    not  second  in 
to  any  of  that  time  with  Laborious  and  ac- 
complished service.     As  instructor  here,  he,  among 

other  tasks,  prepared  a  text-1 k  <>\'  several  Oriental 

dialects,  and  was  a  pioneer  in  our  first  attempts  at  a 
scientific  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  Asa  mem- 
ber of  Congress,  later  on,  he  1  popularity 
to  honest  independence,  becoming  one  of  the  original 
founders  of  the  1;  Soil  party.  As  postm 
of  Boston,  he  was  a  reformer  of  official  methods, 
and  set  an  example,  which  some  would  deem 
fantastic,  of  scrupulous  integrity  in  his  accounts. 
Always  a  laborious  -indent,  the  well-known  cl 


16  THE    OLD   SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

historian  of  New  England,  and  able  among  the 
ablest  editors  of  the  "  North  American  Keview,"  he 
was,  as  a  gentleman,  cultivated  and  courteous,  with 
abounding  vivacity  and  wit.  As  a  man  of  con- 
science, he  set  the  high  example  of  liberating  nine- 
teen slaves  whom  he  had  selected  as  his  share  in  a 
family  inheritance,  and  generously  aiding  them 
afterwards,  as  if  dependent  members  of  his  own 
household.  Such  was  the  versatile  and  brilliant 
intellectual  life  he  brought  to  this  high  service.  By 
so  much  was  the  theologian  ennobled  in  the  man  ! 

I  have  spoken  of  Dr.  Palfrey  as  a  pioneer  among 
us  in  the  scientific  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament. 
This  is  better  seen  in  his  attempt,  published  in 
1840,  at  a  constructive  theory  of  the  book  of 
Genesis,  —  which  he  regarded  as  a  compilation 
from  earlier  sources  by  the  hand  of  Moses,  ■ —  than 
in  his  defence  of  the  Mosaic  authority  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch throughout,  which  is  quite  on  the  lines  of 
the  conventional  apologists.  These  lines  were 
broken  into,  four  years  later,  with  a  much  bolder 
hand,  by  Mr.  Norton  in  his  "  Note  on  the  Old 
Testament,"  which  is  as  radical  in  tone  as  anything 
we  have  had  since,  but  for  its  very  characteristic 
reserve  touching  Moses  and  Elijah.  Dr.  Noyes's 
argument  on  Messianic  prophecy,  in  the  "  Christian 
Examiner"  of  1834,  —  which  brought  out  the 
famous  hint  of  prosecution  under  the  old  Massachu- 
setts law  of  blasphemy,  —  we  may  take  to  have 
been  (however  heretical  it  looked)  a  piece  of  legiti- 
mate textual  criticism  ;  and  it  is  not,  perhaps,  to  be 
counted   as   a  conscious  departure   from   the   tradi- 


THE   LATEB   CRITICISM.  17 

tional  point  of  view.  1 1  e  to  this 
School  by  his  intellectual  candor,  honesty,  and 
courage,  in  guiding  it  through  a  "1  of 
transition,  by  which  he  earned  a  debt  bitude 
from  his  immediate  students  Bucb 
quite  due  to  any  other,  belong  consider- 
ably  later  than   thai    I   have  here  in  view. 

how  how  completely 

the  later  method  of  thinking  that   pre  mong 

US,    both    literary   and  i    in    the    last 

half-century  has  almost  wholly  blotted  out  the 
older  view,  was  an  outgrowth  of  the  training 
of  this  School,     Dr.  Furn<  ader  and   sympa- 

thetic treatment  of  the  gospel  story,  which  ingenu- 
ously attempts  bo  identify  natural  and  supernatural, 
while  keeping  close  to  the  letter  of  the 
claims  to  follow  out  Legitimately  th 
had  learned  under  Norton's  teaching,  since  what 
ii  holds  to  have  been  natural  in  Jesus  would  be 
supernatural    in   anybody  And  it    was  only 

one  easy  step  in  advance  when  Theodore  Parker, 
with  temper  and  motive  widely  different  from 
theirs,  threw  wide  open  to  public  gaze  the 
of  the  course  that  has  been  followed  since.  Bmer- 
Bon's  address  in  this  very  chapel  in  1838,  -the 
controversy  between  Norton  and  Ripley  thai 
lowed  the  next  year,  —  the  group  of  later  eloquent 
expounders,  including  John  Weiss,  Samuel  John- 
son, Octavius  Frothingham,  Samuel  Longfellow,  and 
William  Potter,  not  to  Bpeak  of  work  done  by  their 
associates  still  living,  —  are  bo  many  dates  that 
connect  every  phase  of  the  advancing  liberalism  in 


18  THE    OLD    SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

theology  with  names,  influences,  and  traditions 
belonging  to  this  School.  Not  one  of  them  be- 
trays a  motive  merely  academic,  speculative,  criti- 
cal, or  scientific.  Every  one  made  a  step  forward 
into  a  new  and  wider  intellectual  life.  No  mat- 
ter how  frank  the  negation,  it  always  sought,  not 
a  narrower  or  feebler,  but  a  larger  and  a  robuster 
faith. 

In  this  sketch  I  have  had  in  view  a  definite 
period  in  the  history  of  this  School, — a  period 
which  ended  fifty-six  years  ago,  and  had  most  to 
do  with  shaping  out  that  life  whose  general  fea- 
tures we  have  been  trying  to  retrace.  For  this 
reason  I  have  said  nothing  as  yet,  and  can  say 
but  a  few  words  now  in  closing,  of  two  men  to 
whom  I  am  personally  indebted  very  much,  whose 
best  work  in  life  was  too  closely  related  with  our 
present  topic  to  be  quite  left  out  in  our  survey,  — 
Convers  Francis  and  Frederic  Henry  Hedge. 

Professor  Francis  was  somewhat  on  in  years,  not 
far  from  fifty,  at  his  coming  here ;  and  it  may  be 
that  his  most  fruitful  work  in  life,  his  most  kind- 
ling influence,  and  the  singular  esteem  yielded  him 
by  the  men  of  his  own  time,  belong  rather  to  the 
date  of  his  more  than  twenty  years'  ministry  in 
Watertown  than  to  the  somewhat  hampered  and 
(I  fear)  disappointed  toils  of  his  later  service.  His 
earlier  manhood  fell  in  with  the  sudden  widening 
of  the  intellectual  field  by  what  was,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  the  discovery  of  a  new  literature,  a 
new  philosophy,  a  new  way  of  thinking  among  us. 
I  do  not  dare  to  say  whether  the  enthusiasm  that 


CONVEBS    KHAN  19 

d   this  fresh  discovery  did  or  did  Dot 
qualities   of    <  terman    l< 
German   thought     For   I  half  a 

eration,  while  the  many   Looked  on   ignorantl; 
jealously  askance,  th<  i  :<>  whom 

s  almost  as  if  there  were  no  -  and 

no  other  thought  worth  their  study.     In  the 
of  this  select  circle,  the  mind  of   I  > r.  Fi 

I  with  eager  enjoyment  ami  quenchless  thirst 
the  i  thus   thrown   open,  though  it  might 

be  in   their  mosl   arid  form.     For  it  mind 

more  sympathetic  than  critical,  widely  and  •_ 
ously  eclectic,  almost  too  impartial  in  its  likes,  and 
apparently  having  no  dial  A    Theodore 

Parker,  hi  ful  your  ad,  said  to  1 

"did  not  gravitate  to  the  r  thoughts  or  the 

greater  minds."     Such  width  of  mental  sym] 
lacks  some  Btringent  mental  tonii       I  I  less 

•  ive   faculty,  his   m  superfluil 

mere  possession,  which  dulled  the 
dent  thinking,  and,  like  a  lens  inconveniently  near, 
blurred  the  Bharp  outline  of  the  object  yon  were 
trying  to  define.  Bat  to  one  Becking  mat. -rial  for 
unbiassed  judgment  nothing  could  be  finer  than 
that  quiet  impartiality,  that  untiring  kindliness  and 
patience,  that  lavish  generosity  in  patting  at  your 
service,  in  any  Bhape  you  would,  the  stores  he  had 
so  diligently  gathered.      N  I   am    Bure, 

d  the  interest  of  true  learning  here  with  more 
scrupulous  devotion;  ami  the  placid  widening-out 
of  the  circle  of  our  knowledge  under  his  kindly 
influence  was  of  more  value,  in  that  day  of  i 


20  THE    OLD    SCHOOL   AND   ITS   WORK. 

anticipation    and   hastily   formed   conclusion,  than 
some  of  us  were  quite  willing  to  understand. 

Dr.  Hedge's  large  and  richly  stored  intelligence 
had  had  the  advantage  of  a  far  more  thorough 
early  discipline  than  most  of  us  have  received,  or 
than  could  have  been  given  in  this  country  at  the 
time  he  needed  it  most.  In  his  school-days  Ger- 
man became  to  him  a  second  mother  tongue.  Thus 
not  only  did  he  benefit  from  the  tonic  method  of  the 
German  "gymnasium,"  but  he  was  guarded  from 
the  illusion  which  many  suffered  under,  of  taking 
all  to  be  sublime,  august,  and  true  that  came  to 
them  in  the  long  and  many  syllables  of  that  magic 
tongue,  —  since  he  knew,  among  other  things,  Ger- 
man school-boy  slang.  The  great  boon  he  gained 
from  that  source  was,  however,  qualified  in  him  by 
two  specially  English  gifts  —  a  certain  wealth  of 
poetic  imagination,  with  a  feeling  of  the  rhythmic 
melody  of  language  that  might  easily  have  made 
one  of  less  critical  or  reflective  temper  eminent  as 
orator  or  poet ;  and  a  deep  ground  of  ethical  con- 
viction, which  wholly  dominated  his  speculative 
faculty,  and  made  him  restive  under  the  restraint 
of  any  merely  intellectual  creed.  More  than  any 
other  of  like  philosophic  turn  whom  I  have  ever 
known,  philosophy  was  to  him  a  department  of 
literature,  not  a  system  of  regulated  opinion.  More 
than  with  any  other  of  so  wide  literary  accomplish- 
ment, the  chief  interest  with  him  lay  in  the  ranges 
of  higher  contemplation.  The  more  he  studied  the 
results  of  speculative  science,  the  less  he  was  satis- 
fied with  any  claim  it  put  forth  to  solve  that  most 


FREDERIC    H.    HEDGE.  21 

tantalizing  of  problems,  how  to  give  a  tme  intel- 
lectual theory  of  the  universe.  It  is  likely  that 
this  seDse  of  inadequacy  troubled  at  intervals  his 
philosophic  conscience;  for  i.  quite  let  that 

problem  go,  or  fully  accepted  the  positivist  d 
(which  he  inclined  to)  that  in  the  nature  of  things 
it  is  unsolvable.     Bi  was  that  which  many 

of  the  best    mind  ind,  —  re- 

ligious discipline  and  religious  meditation.  The 
visible  work  he  did  was  by  no  means  a  full  measure 
of  his  ability ;  yel   he  wa  I  the  most  | 

taking  as  well  as  conscientious  of  workers,  one  of 
the   widest   in   intellectual   range,   and   a   dil 
I        er  to  the  end  of  his  day       II      most  ch 
teristic  treatise,  "Reason  in  Religion,"  wi 
associated  with   his  earlier  labors  here;  and  it  re- 
mains among  the  most  highly  valued  of  the  agencies 
that  have  enriched  the  thinking  faculty  in  a  gen- 
eration later  than  his  own. 

I  have  thus  outlined,  bo  :  my  allotted  hour 

permits,  tin*  work  of  tin-  old  School  a-  we  have 
known  it,  illustrated  by  the  names  and  incidents 

most    familiar  in    its   history.      Bow   that    work    has 

been  developed  ami  carried  on  in  the  half-century 
Bince  the  period  chiefly  had  in  view,  and  how  in 

influence  has  gone  forth  upon  the  mind  and  life  of 
cur  community,  is  a  topic  requiring  a  treat- 

ment and  a  different  hand.  I  trust  that  what  has 
now  been  said  may  serve,  in  some  Blight  measure, 
as  an  introduction  to  Buch  a  theme. 


II. 

GEEMAN   INFLUENCE.1 

IN  order  to  bring  the  vast  topic  of  German  The- 
ology in  any  intelligible  way  within  my  limits, 
I  must  confine  myself  to  the  very  narrowest  inter- 
pretation of  the  words  in  which  my  subject  is  an- 
nounced. And  these  must  be  understood  to  mean, 
not  how  Unitarianism  is  to  be  found  in  German 
theology,  for  it  is  not  there  at  all  —  at  least  in 
name.  The  German  theologians,  for  reasons  which 
I  need  nob  explain,  are  generally  bound  by  Lutheran 
or  other  State  traditions  and  conditions  ;  and  while 
it  may  often  be  said  of  the  best  of  them  that  their 
way  of  thinking  is  quite  in  harmony  with  ours,  their 
form  of  doctrine  is  wholly  different.  1  shall  not, 
therefore,  trouble  myself  or  you  about  that,  but 
take  what  is  the  only  serviceable  rendering  of  the 
words  of  my  title,  namely  :  How,  when,  and  where 
has  the  course  of  Unitarianism  in  America  been 
affected  by  contact  with  German  theology  since  the 
beginning  of  that  movement  of  thought  among  us 
which  we  term  Transcendental  ? 

This  brings  me,  again,  to  a  very  precise  date, 
which  I  must  take  for  my  starting-point.  That 
date  I  shall  take,  for  reasons  of  convenience,  at  just 

1  An  address  delivered  in  Charming  Hall,  in  November,  1888. 


EMERSON'S    ADD! 

fifty  years  And,  as  there  is  a  persona]  equa- 

tion in  all  these  things  which  more  or  Less  warps 
our  judgment  of  them,  perhaps  you  will  pardon  me 
the  impropriety  of  a  word  to  explain  what  those 
;  i  convenient  I      is  at  that  time  a 

student  in  college,  among  circumstances  thai 
me  to  take  an  eager  Interest  in  the  discussions  then 
going  on,  and  to  look  forward  with  timid  hope  to 
til.-  part  I  might  possibly  be  afterwards  called  to 
take  in  them.  I  was  in  the  dear  and  serious  h 
hold  of  my  mother's  brother  Henry  Wan-,  Junior, 
who  affectionately  <  acouraged  Buch  early  hopes  in 
his  kindly  bul   taciturn   way.     I   I  tied  with 

a  vague  but  exhilarating  delight  to  Mr.  Emerson's 
J Jiviiut v   School    Ad  h  \ en    i hat    Bumm 

which  had,  as  you  know,  shocked  Borne,  while  it 
had  charmed  others,  as  the  fii  word  of 

other  gospel,  which  yet  was  not  another."  So  thai 
I  was  already  prepared,  when  a  year  liter  the  battle 
of  the  books  began,  to  follow  its  changing  fortunes 

with  a  degr f  personal  feeling  as  to  the  issues 

involved  which  has  not  been  in  the  least  diminished 
to  this  day.     [n  Bhort,  to  Bpeak  with  still  gr 
precision,  the  exact   crisis  that  broughl   to  the  front 

the  bearing   of   German   tl logy    upon    American 

opinion   was  I  lie   publication,  in  1839,  of  Pro 
Andrews  Norton's  Divinity  School   \  ion  "The 

Latest  Form  of  Infidelity." 

Bere,  perhaps,  1  ought  to  add  a  further  word  of 
explanation.  First,  as  t  i  myself,  — for  by  nurture 
and  habit  T  clung  strongly  to  the  more  ative 

side   in   the  debate  that  followed.      I  have  always 


24  GEEMAN   INFLUENCE. 

considered  that  Professor  Norton  had  the  better  of 
his  opponents  in  scholarship  and  logic ;  till  the  age 
of  twenty-five  I  intended  or  expected  that  my  place 
would  be  on  that  side ;  and  if  I  have  altered  from 
this  position  since,  it  has  been  not  so  much  due  (as 
I  think)  to  the  course  of  that  discussion  as  to  a 
passage  of  argument  with  that  rude  logician,  Orestes 
A.  Brownson,  during  the  crisis  of  the  notable  change 
by  which  he  became  a  Catholic.  Next,  as  to  others ; 
for  the  real  point  at  issue  in  that  debate  has  been 
often  misunderstood,  as  if  it  had  been  the  question 
of  admitting  the  supernatural  or  miraculous  in 
Christianity.  On  the  contrary,  in  one  of  his  letters 
addressed  to  Professor  Norton,  Mr.  George  Eipley 
says  :  "  For  my  own  part,  I  cannot  avoid  the  con- 
clusion that  the  miracles  related  in  the  Gospels 
were  actually  wrought  by  Jesus  : "  and  in  a  pamph- 
let of  the  same  date,  understood  to  have  been  writ- 
ten by  Theodore  Parker,  he  says,  "  I  believe  that 
Jesus,  like  other  religious  teachers,  wrought  mira- 
cles." And  as  neither  of  these  men  has  been  ac- 
cused of  Jesuistry  or  moral  cowardice,  it  appears 
that  the  question  at  issue  was  not  as  to  their 
opinions,  which  at  that  time  were  in  the  main  con- 
ventional and  customary,  but  as  to  a  new  and  un- 
familiar order  of  thought,  which  was  seen  to  be 
powerfully  affecting  the  principles  and  foundations 
of  men's  religious  belief.  What  this  new  order  of 
thought  was,  and  what  has  been  its  effect  among  us 
during  this  past  half-century,  it  will  be  my  duty  to 
make  as  clear  as  I  can  within  the  limits  allowed 
me. 


GERMAN    THEOLOGY.  _  • 

That  Influence,  whatever  it  was,  we  ascribe  in  a 
vague  and  general  way  to  German  theol 
dally  from  the  time  of  Schleiermacher.     But 
mail  theology  of  that  period  —  that  is,  of  the  last 
ninety  yeai  9  ■     is  (as  1  said    a  \  I  and  un- 

manageable topic;  and  I  must  therefore  narrow  my 
Geld  still   further,  by  pointing  out   t  t  de- 

partments into  which  it  may  be  roughly  divided. 

First  is  that  which  especially  dates  from  Schleier- 
macher himself,  though  it  also  has  to  do  with  those 
famous  philosophical  schools  which  appear  to  have 
had  absolute  control  in  the  higher  thought  oi 
many  down  to  about  forty  years  ago,  —  chiefly,  the 
school  of  Hegel.  It  was  these  that 
intellectual  impul  -  ■.  and  that  appeared  to  open  up 
an  entirely  new  interpretation  of  religious  thought 
and  the  religious  Life;  and  hence  created  that  fresh 
enthusiasm  among  some  of  our  younger  men  half  a 
century  or  more  ago,  which  we  call  Transcendental- 
ism, and  Prof<  i  Norton  called  "  the  latest  form  of 
[nfidelity."  This  (as  I  just  said  did  not  so  much 
affect  men's  particular  opinions  as  their  whole  way 
of  Looking  at  the  subject  of  Religion.  We  may  call 
it,  if  you  please,  the  German  Speculate    Theol 

rod,  and  producing  its  effect  more  gradually, 
is  a  movement  which  Btarted  still  farther  hack, 
largely  from  the  impulse  given  by  the  German  poet 
and  critic,  Leasing.  I  may  describe  it  in  a  genera] 
way  by  saying  that  its  effect  has  been  to  take  the 
Bible  out  of  that  sanctuary  where  it  was  regarded  as 
a  holy  thing  by  itself,  never  to  be  judged,  but  only 
to  be  explained  and  then  accepted  reveringly  by  the 


26  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

human  mind ;  to  take  it,  I  say,  from  that  sanctuary, 
to  class  it  among  our  other  literary  treasures,  and  to 
interpret  it  just  as  we  do  other  books  of  history,  of 
legend  or  tradition,  of  moral  exhortation,  or  of  re- 
ligious poetry.  I  say  nothing  for  or  against  this 
result,  which  I  suppose  that  we  are  all  at  this  day 
fully  agreed  to  accept.  I  only  say  that  to  bring  it 
about  took  something  like  a  century  of  controversy, 
often  very  angry  and  bitter ;  and  that  during  this 
time  there  was  evolved  a  mass  of  erudition,  argu- 
ment, exposition,  speculation,  literally  unspeakable 
in  its  dimensions,  which  makes  the  field  of  German 
Critical  Tlieology.  And  it  is  the  diligent  cultiva- 
tion of  this  field  among  our  own  best  scholars  — 
including  Professor  Noyes,  Dr.  Hedge,  Theodore 
Parker,  and  James  Freeman  Clarke,  against  the 
strong  protest  of  the  elder  school  represented  by 
Professor  Norton  —  that  has  brought  about  the 
most  marked  changes  in  the  body  of  opinion  known 
as  American  Unitarianism. 

Third,  we  must  reckon  a  field  with  which  I  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  here,  although  in  some  ways 
it  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of  all.  For  Ger- 
man theology,  in  its  large  sense,  has  been  one  of  the 
greatest  and  most  remarkable  educating  influences 
of  the  last  half-century  to  a  very  large  class  of 
minds.  Every  topic  suggested  in  both  the  lines 
of  discussion  I  have  described  has  been  taken  up, 
and  with  infinite  painstaking,  erudition,  and  patience 
followed  out  to  the  last  slender  filament  of  inference 
or  investigation  on  which  it  was  possible  to  string 
an  opinion  or  a  guess.     It  would  be  mere  pedantry 


IHLEIERMAGHEB. 

to  cite  the  Dames  of  the  innumerable  labor  • 
thai    wide   fi  M  ;  '   and  any   attempt   to  explore  it 
would  only  lead  us  away  from  the  Btrict  and  narrow 
line  we  have  to  follow.     That  portion  <»f  the  field 
we   may  call  the  German    Theolog  ition. 

With  it,  as  I   have   said,  I  have   for  the  pn 
nothing  to  do. 

I  must  now  go  back,  and  explain  the  prominence 
which  has  been  given  in  my  topic  to  the  name  of 
Schleiermacher. 

Frederick  Daniel  Ernst  Schleiermacher  was  born 
in  1 768,  and  died  in   1  ^  1.  at  tip-  j  -six. 

lie  was  a  in. iii  of  tin-  very  finest  religious  genius, 
a  preacher  "i  extraordinary  fervor  and  wealth  of 
thought,  "i"  a  moral  nature  singularly  clinging,  sym- 
pathetic, and  emotional,  a  scholar  of  vast  erudition 
even  for  a  ( rerman,  a  student  i  and  ind 

gable  industry,  and  a  teacher,  or  intimate  advis* 
personal  weight  and  influence  almost  unparalleled. 
Professor  Philip  Schaff  calls  him,  without  qualifica- 
tion, "  the  greatest  divine  of  the  nineteenth  century." 
To  understand  the  ground  of  his  unexampled  and 
unique  influence  upon  the  religious  thought  of  his 
day,  we  should  take  into  account  that  very  early  in 
life  he  saw  (dearly  these  two  things:  first,  that  the 
doctrinal  system  built  up  during  the  Reformation 
had  completely  gone  I  and  existed  only  as  a 

lifeless  and  sterile  form — at  least  in  Germany  and 
among  the  educated  classes,  where  his  work  was,  as 
ee  in  the  life  of    Lessing —  and  must    | 

1  Tholnck  and  Neander  are  perhaps  those  which  will  be  most 
widely  and  gratefully  recognized. 


28  GERMAN  INFLUENCE. 

unless  a  new  soul  could  be  breathed  into  it ;  and, 
second,  that  the  idea,  the  method,  the  discipline, 
embodied  in  the  Christian  Church  and  known  to  the 
Christian  conscience,  must  form  the  type,  the  model, 
the  condition,  under  which  such  new  religious  life 
could  be  had,  —  and  this,  if  it  must  be,  independent 
of  all  doctrinal  forms  whatever.  To  show  the  inten- 
sity of  his  conviction  on  this  point,  I  copy  here  his 
own  words  :  "  Eeligion  was  the  mother's  bosom,  in 
whose  sacred  warmth  and  darkness  my  young  life 
was  nourished  and  prepared  for  the  world  which  lay 
before  me  all  unknown  ;  and  she  still  remained  with 
me,  ivhen  God  and  immortality  vanished  before  my 
doubting  eyes."  This,  I  say,  is  his  characteristic 
testimony  to  the  reality  of  the  religious  life,  wholly 
independent  of  all  doctrinal  forms  whatever.  And 
we  must  take  it  as  our  starting-point,  in  estimating 
both  the  peculiar  nature  of  his  influence  upon  the 
mind  of  his  time,  and  the  peculiar  dread  of  that 
influence  which  we  find  amongst  those  who,  like 
Professor  Norton,  honestly  held  that  very  clearly 
defined  opinions  were  essential  to  any  hold  at  all 
upon  the  Christian  faith.  To  such  minds  that  lan- 
guage sounded  merely  vague,  delusive,  and 
sophistical. 

The  date  of  the  first  strong  impression  made  by 
Schleiermacher  upon  the  mind  of  his  time  was  the 
year  1799,  when  he  published  a  series  of  eloquent 
pamphlet  "  Discourses "  on  Eeligion,  addressed  to 
"  the  cultivated  among  its  despisers."  As  to  this 
date  we  have  to  bear  in  mind  that  it  was  just  at  the 
coming  in  of  the  tide  of  reaction  that  followed  the 


BLEIEBMACHBE  20 

extravagant  anti-religioua  fury  of  the  French  I 
Lution,  and  Bel  so  strongly  towards  conservatism  in 
politics  and  religion  :  bo  that  he  was  doing  in  Ger- 
many a  Like  task  to  that  attempted  just  then  by 
Chateaubriand  in  France.  But  we  must  look  back 
of  that  date,  to  see  how  this  religious  reaction  took 
just  the  shape  it  did  in  his  mind  The  father  of 
Bchleiermacher  ws  rioned  Calvinistic 

her,  chaplain  to  a  regiment  ;  and,  for  conven- 
ience in  Borne  of  his  wanderings,  he  put  the  I 
school  among  the  "  A£ora\  ian  Brel  hren. 
made  the  most  pious  of  religious  communities.  In 
spiritual  descenl  their  tradition  came  down  from 
Bohemian  exiles,  who  carried  into  their  retreat  the 
same  religious  ardor  that  had  flamed  with  such 
obstinate  fury  in  the  ETussite  war-;  but  in  them,  or 
in  their  followers,  it  was  tempered  to  some- 

what austere,  and  most  oobly  self-sacrificing  piety. 
It  was  the  placid  faith  of  a  company  of  Moravian 
missionaries  in  a  Btorm  at  sea  that  had  touched  John 
Wesley  more  profoundly  than  ever  before  with  the 
reality  and  power  of  a  religious  life.  And  this 
obscure  community  was  "  tin*  mother's  bosom,  warm 

and  dark,"  which  nourished  the  germs  <»t"  that  young 
lip-  given  to  its  charge. 

The  later  experience   of  university  life,  and  the 
deliberate  study  of  the  Deistical  writer-  (then  mak- 
ing a  good  deal  of  uoise),  \\  Inch  he  undertook  against 
his  father's  earnest  protest,  did  net.  as  we  have 
extinguish  the  d<  e  that  religion  in  </<• 

is  the  most  profound  and  blessed  of  realities;  while 
did  convince  him  that  it  must  be  interpreted 


30  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

to  the  educated  mind  in  a  way  very  different  from 
the  old  doctrinal  scheme,  —  a  way  in  which  the 
form  of  expression  should  be,  avowedly,  not  the 
adequate  statement  of  a  fact  of  human  knowledge, 
but  the  symbol,  or  image  (  Vorstellung)  of  that  which 
far  transcends  all  human  knowledge.  Hence  he 
chose  such  phrases  as  seemed  to  minds  like  Pro- 
fessor Norton's  a  mere  playing  fast  and  loose  with 
sacred  things,  sophistry  or  conscious  self-deception, 
"  veil-weaving  "  2  about  one's  real  opinions,  so  as  to 
hide  their  true  meaning  from  others'  eyes.  Thus, 
departing  from  the  common  language  of  theology, 
Schleiermacher  speaks  not  of  "  God  the  Creator  and 
Moral  Governor  "  (which  are  the  terms  insisted  on 
by  Martineau  and  English  thinkers  generally),  but 
rather  of  "the  Divine  Life  "  and  our  "  communion 
with  the  Living  God :  a  sharp  distinction,"  he  says, 
"  is  to  be  drawn  between  the  Living  God  and  a 
personal  God  ; "  not  of  "  a  Future  Life  of  Judgment," 
in  the  terms  familiar  to  most  Christians,  but  rather 
of  the  "  Eternal  Life,"  or  deathlessness  of  the  spirit- 
ual principle  in  man,  and  of  its  blending  in  the 
Hereafter  with  the  Universal  Life,  in  language  that 
implied,  or  seemed  to  imply,  that  its  conscious 
identity  would  be  lost.  2  In  short,  his  whole  system 
of  doctrine  (G-lauhenslehre)  —  which  is  developed  at 
great  length  and  very  elaborately  —  appears  to  be 
built  on  the  interpreting  not  of  any  written  word, 
but  of  the  actual  experience  of  the  religious  life.    Its 

1  Schleiermacher  (as  Professor  Norton  reminds  us)  is  a  German 
word  signifying  "  veil-maker." 

2  Compare  Martineau's  "  Study  of  Religion,"  ii.  355-360. 


BCHL1IERMACHEB. 

data  arc  purely  tfo  f  Christian 

and.  as  a  countryman  of  his  has  said  of  him,  it  was 
"quite  uncertain  whether  Schleiermacher  believed 
or  not  in  revelation,  miracle,  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
the  trinity,  the  personality  f  God,  or  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul.  In  hia  theological  phrases  he 
would  avoid  all  that  could  distinctly  mean  this  or 
that.''     In  his  exposition  of  faith  I  with  this 

one  point  of  fact  :  /  am  a  Christian  :  this  I  am  by 
nature  and  Inheritance.     Byinl  ad  analy- 

sis, net  by  stu.lv  of  the  Letter  of  the  gospel,  he  will 
then  determine  what  thai  fact  implies;  what  is  the 
meaning  of  incarnation,  atonement,  resurrection,  in 
the  terms  of  religious  ace  ;  and  this  shall  be 

his  Christian  creed.  01  course,  all  sharp  bounds  of 
doctrine  disappear;  and  this  simplicity  of  method, 
carried  out  with  the  wonderful  wealth  and  fervor 
of  his  exposition,  makes  him  the  greal  i 
libera]  theology,  by  \\  hatever  name  his  disciples  may 
be  called 

But  it  is  doI  my  business  here  to  expound  Schleier- 
macher's  method  or  doctrinal  system,  however 
briefly:  only  to  -how  how  the  order  of  thoughl  I 
have  beeu  trying  to  describe  came  into  effect  on 
England  Unitarianism  at  that  particular  time ;  why 
it  fascinated  seme  while  it  alarmed  or  offended 
others,  and  in  what  ways  it  has  modified  the  char- 
acter of  our  religious  thinking  ever  sin 

This  order  of   thought    \  -   I   have  already 

hinted)  further  strengthened  by  those  schools  of 
German  philosophy  so  powerful  in  the  first  half  of 
this   century,  which   came   to   be   eagerly   studied 


32  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

among  us  about  fifty  years  ago.  I  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  them  here  as  systems  of  opinion. 
I  only  speak  of  them  because  they  shared  the  same 
obloquy  with  the  new  theology  from  those  who  im- 
perfectly understood  them ;  and  because  they  have 
strongly  affected  the  current  of  opinion  since  —  more 
strongly  than  most  of  us  are  apt  to  think.  Not 
directly ;  for  few  cared  to  study  them,  or  could 
possibly  understand  them  if  they  did.  But  those 
few  have  in  a  very  special  sense  been  the  teachers 
of  our  generation,  and  have  influenced  even  the  pop- 
ular way  of  thinking  among  us  more  than  we  are 
often  aware.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  for  example, 
was  strongly  attracted  by  these  philosophies  and  by 
the  theology  founded  upon  them.  Then  there  are 
two  well-known  works  of  two  very  accomplished 
students  in  this  direction  :  "  Reason  in  Religion  "  by 
Dr.  Hed<^e,  to  whom  German  came  to  be  almost  a 
second  mother  tongue  during  his  school-days  passed 
in  Germany,  and  who  had  as  much  to  do  as  anybody 
in  naturalizing  the  new  order  of  thought  among  us ; 
and  "  The  Science  of  Thought,"  by  Professor  Everett, 
which  is  understood  to  be  a  product  of  the  philoso- 
phy of  Hegel,  —  that  philosophy  held  in  especial 
dread  and  abhorrence  by  sober  thinkers  among  us 
half  a  century  ago.  Just  in  proportion  to  the  seri- 
ousness and  the  religiousness  of  their  way  of  think- 
ing have  the  men  of  a  younger  generation  been 
influenced  by  such  books  as  these. 

But  the  philosophy  I  speak  of  has  had  another 
effect  among  us,  more  direct  and  more  intelligible. 
Fifty  years  ago,  as  I  have  shown,  Unitarians  were 


OPINION   as  TO   Mil: v  I.: 

substantially  all  agreed  in  accepting  Ohristianil 
icial  and  supernatural  revelation,  in  the  common 
of  those  terms.     I   have  quoted  both  <  -• 
Ripley  and  Theodore  Parker,  in    their  control 
with   Professor  Norton,  as  professing,  with  the  m- 
mosl  apparent  simplicity,  their  own  belief   in    the 
( Christian   naira  I         At  thia  day,  on  the  conl 
qoI  only  (with  very  rare  <       ;  tions)  those  who  are 
rded  as  Leaders  of  thought  among  us  —  such  as 
Martineau  in   England   and    Hedge    in    Ameri 

quietly  dropped  or  openly  discarded  the  argu- 
ment  from    miracles;    but    Broad    Churchmen    in 
England,  like  Bishop  Colenso,  who  never  forfeited 
hi>  bishopric,  like  Rev.  ( Jharles  \    . 
Brooke  (before  tin  ion  of  these  have 

done  the  same;  Matthew  Arnold,  openly  a  member 
of  the  Church  of  England,  saya  without  rebuke  that 
"miracles  do  oof  happen."  The  way  for  thi 
markable  change  of  opinion  among  men  in  general 
has  do  doubt  been  opened  by  scientific  habit 
thinking;  but,  as  a  change  in  religious  opinion,  the 
way  for  it  had  to  be  prepared  by  philosophy. 
Schleiermacher,  as  usual,  speaks  both  ways:  "  In- 
sulate any  natural  fact,"  he  says,  "and  it  becomes 
a  miracle;  repeat  any  miracle,  and  it  becomes 
a  natural  fact"  Ami.  for  a  time,  the  religious 
scruple  is  pacified  by  such  a  compromise. 

Clear  and  honest  thinking,  however,  demands 
something  more  than  this  tampering  with  words. 
It  demands,  first,  a  fixed  habit  <•!'  mind  in  harmony 
with  thf  best  opinion  or  knowledge  <>t'  the  day: 
this  we  call  a  philosophical  method  in  our  thought; 


34  •    GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

and,  second,  a  careful  study,  with  the  best  helps  of 
modern  learning,  of  the  documents  and  evidences  of 
our  faith  :  this  we  call  a  scientific  criticism  in  our 
theology.  I  have  just  spoken  of  the  great  change 
that  has  come  to  pass  in  the  opinions  of  the  think- 
ing world,  in  the  common  understanding  of  the 
Bible  history.  I  have  now  a  few  words  to  say  of 
the  way  in  which  this  change  has  been  helped 
amongst  ourselves  by  the  study  of  German  critical 
theology. 

To  go  into  the  subject  properly,  I  ought  to  show 
how  there  have  grown  up  in  Germany,  more  or 
less  directly  as  the  fruit  of  different  philosophical 
schools,  a  great  variety  of  interpretations,  or  ways 
of  interpreting  the  Bible  records,  most  of  them  more 
or  less  rationalistic  ;  and  how  these  may  be  divided 
into  three  main  groups  :  the  non-miraculous,  pure 
and  simple,  represented  by  the  name  of  Paulus  ; 
the  mythical  or  poetic,  represented  by  Strauss ;  and 
the  historical  or  scientific,  of  which  the  best  ex- 
ponent is  the  school  of  Baur.  Now  the  story  of 
these  groups  is  extremely  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive, but  I  have  not  time  to  give  it  here  ; 1  and, 
besides,  my  subject  seems  to  make  it  more  proper 
for  me  to  illustrate  it  by  examples  taken  among  our 
own  students  and  theologians,  instead  of  those  that 
come  to  us  across  the  water  in  a  foreign  tongue. 

Strictly  speaking,  there  has  been  no  scholarly 
investigation  of  this  field  amongst  ourselves.  The 
best  that  any  of  our  students  have  done  has  been 

1  It  is  given  in  "  Christian  History  in  its  Three  Great  Periods," 
vol.  iii.  pp.  227-238. 


KARLIEB   tNDICATIOl 

to  study  according  to  their  ability,  and  appropriate 
as  far  ai  they  thought  good,  the  learning  which  has 

1 n  poured   forth  in  unstinted  measure  from   the 

German  press.  German  has  for  this  half-century 
the  favorite,  I  may  Bay  the  indispensable, 
language  in  which  to  follow  up  any  of  these  lines 
of  investigation.  And,  whether  <»ur  own  writers 
have  borrowed  their  opinions  out  and  out,  or 
whether  they  have  thought  them  out  for  them- 
Belvea  under  the  atmospheric  pressure  of  that 
world  of  learning  and  speculation,  the  result  is 
one:  the  general,  even  the  popular,  way  of  looking 
at  the  subject,  with  <>r  without  knowing  it,  has 
taken  it  -  tone  from  I  rermany. 

The  earliest  signs  of  this  influence  among  as  were 
in  essay  on  "The    Messianic    Prophecies,"   by  Mr. 

rwards  I  i  l;    \ 

critical  "Lectures  on  the  <  >l«l  Testament,"  by  Prc- 
c  Palfrey,  published  in  184  \  be  on 

the  ( Md  Testament,"  by  P  N  irton,  in  184  \. 

These,  however,  though  expressing  the  extreme  of 
radical  opinion  in  their  day,  were  addressed  only  to 
scholars,  and  hardly  reached  the  general  mind  ;  then, 
too,  they  did  not  directly  touch  the  ( Thrist  ian  records, 
and  so  excited  little  or  no  particular  alarm.  The  first 
book  I  remember,  Bhowing  (dear  trace  1 1  srman 
influence  upon  critical  opinion,  —  less  by  its  argu- 
ment than  by  the  fact  of  its  publication,  —  v. 
tale  called  u  Theodore,  or  the  Skeptic's  Conversion," 
translated  by  James  Freeman  Clarke  from  the 
learned  and  famous  theologian  De  Wette.  Theodore 
is  an  ingenuous  young  theologian,  beginning  to  be 


36  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

troubled  with  doubts  of  the  supernatural,  —  a  sort 
of  Eobert  Elsmere  of  that  period,  whose  spiritual 
struggles  are  mild,  indeed,  compared  with  those  of 
a  later  day,  and  who  easily  finds  comfort  in  such 
pious  compromises  as  those  we  have  seen  in 
Schleiermacher.  There  could  not  have  been  a 
gentler  or  kindlier  introduction  among  us  of  the 
line  of  thought  which  controversy  was  to  make  so 
familiar  afterwards.  De  Wette  was  one  of  the 
earliest,  one  of  the  most  devout  and  pure-minded, 
as  well  as  most  copious  and  learned,  of  the  new 
school  of  commentators;  and  his  writings,  though 
long  left  behind  by  the  rushing  current  of  specu- 
lative exegesis,  did  perhaps  more  than  any  others 
to  instruct  the  students  of  that  generation. 

It  is  natural  to  speak  next  of  the  work  of 
Theodore  Parker,  whose  chief  task  of  erudition  was 
to  translate  and  expound,  from  his  immense  range 
of  reading,  De  Wette's  commentary  on  the  Old 
Testament.  He  had  already,  in  his  South  Boston 
sermon  on  "  The  Transient  and  Permanent  in 
Christianity  "  (1841),  cast  these  topics  of  learned 
discussion  into  the  waters  of  popular  controversy  ; 
and  his  name,  more  than  any  other,  came  to  be  the 
watchword  of  the  change  of  opinion  that  was  slowly 
coming  to  pass  upon  the  popular  mind :  a  change 
which  was  strikingly  shown  three  years  ago  this 
month,  when  the  American  Unitarian  Association 
published  a  large  volume  of  Theodore  Parker's 
writings,  including  that  very  discourse,  under  the 
editorship  of  James  Freeman  Clarke. 

Two  other  Unitarian  scholars,  especially  revered 


W.    H.    FUBNESa  —  K.    II. 

and   beloved   among    as,  have    Bhown    in    different 
and  more  obscurely  something  of  the  German 
influence  in  their  commentaries  upon  I 
J)r.   William    Henry    Furness    and   Mr.    Edmund 
Hamilton    Sears.  ad   his    I 

which  is  the  completest  and  tement  oi  Dr, 

Furni  ith  extn 

tnde  and  respect  his  obligation  to  his  instructor 
Profi  rton  ;    but   its   chai  iw  — 

thai  the  miracles,  taken  in  their  most  literal  * 
natural  I   Buch  a  sou]  as  Ji  • 

n<»t  only  w  k  to  the  I  opinion, 

but  no  one  can  read  the  rationalistic  commentary 
of  Paulus,  without  Boeing  how  the  two  differ  in 
their  method  only  by  a  hairVbreadth,  and  how 
(consciously  or  not)  the  one  has  caught  the  manner 
and  spirit  of  the  other  whom  apparently  he  means 
to  contradict     They  have  the  f-fact 

w ay  of  taking  the  detail  of  narrative  and  of  gii  in,ur  it 
a  "natural"  explanation,  each  in  his  own  fashion. 
Allow  for  the  thick,  clumsy,  dingy,  ill-printed 
German  volumes,  and  Bet  beside  them  the  fair, 
clean,  trim, compact  pages  of  the  American  prei 
compare  the  scholastic  method  of  the  German 
erudite,  who  chiefly  rejoices  and  expands  in  the  dry 
light  of  criticism,  with  the  religious  beauty  and 
tenderness  that   mark  the   later  exposition,  —  and 

you    have    in    the   one,  in   many  a    familiar   pas 

only   a   transfigured   Likeness   of    the   other.      Mr. 

Sears's  "Heart  of  Christ,*'  1  should  Bay  on  the  ether 

hand,  with  perhaps  a  little  less  confidence 

in  the  great  sweetness  and  spiritual  beauty  of  its 


38  GERMAN    INFLUENCE. 

exposition,  the  tone  of  Olshausen,  that  most  devout 
and  mystical  of  learned  commentators,  whose  ortho- 
doxy of  belief  seems  purely  a  phase  of  his  senti- 
mental piety,  and  whose  spirit  is  wonderfully 
winning  as  you  begin  to  read  him,  whether  or  not 
you  are  long  content  with  his  intellectual  view. 
Mr.  Sears's  refined  and  beautiful  intelligence  was 
the  gracious  channel  through  which  that  vein  of 
influence  flowed  in,  to  the  delight  and  comfort  of 
many  a  kindred  mind. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  theologian  among  us  who 
has  accepted  seriously  Strauss's  mythical  theory  of 
interpreting  the  gospel  narrative.  It  was  taken  up 
by  Theodore  Parker,  while  it  was  yet  new,  in  the 
"  Christian  Examiner,"  in  an  admirable  exposition 
and  confutation;  and  I  do  not  remember  any  dis- 
cussion of  it  as  a  living  issue  among  us  since.  In 
brief,  it  would  make  the  supernatural  parts  of  the 
Gospels  a  sort  of  allegory,  or  philosophical  poem, 
founded  on  ideas  current  in  Jewish  tradition,  and 
embodying  in  symbols  certain  facts  and  phases  of 
the  higher  life  of  man.  Especially  such  transcen- 
dental facts  of  the  Gospel  narrative  as  the  Incar- 
nation, the  Temptation,  the  Transfiguration,  the 
Kesurrection  and  Ascension,  are  expounded  frankly 
as  "  myths,"  —  that  is,  philosophical  ideas,  or  facts 
of  the  religious  life,  put  in  the  form  of  narrative  of 
real  events,  which  are  regarded  as  purely  symbolic 
or  allegorical.  It  is  understood  to  be  the  product 
of  what  is  called  the  school  of  Hegel  "  of  the  Left " 
in  philosophy ;  and,  if  one  wishes  to  see  how  that 
general  line  of  symbolic   interpretation    is    carried 


D.    I .    STRAUSS.  —  I'.   a    BAITS. 

oat  through  the  field  of  fu«-t  and  dogma,  he  might 
be  advised,  instead  of  studying  the  words  of  Strauss 
himself  (which  are  foreign  in  tone,  and  more  or  less 
repellent  to  ue  .  to  find  it  in  the  writings  of  D 
Eedge   and    Everett    before  specially    the 

form* 

Of  far  greater  importance  at  this  day  than  the 
schools  of  criticism  yet  spoken  of  is  whal  is  known 
as  the  "Tubingen  School,"  established  and  still 
largely  controlled  by  the  massive  Learning  and 
masterly  mind  of  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur,  I 
have  myself  several  times  given  public  exposition 
of  the  method  of  this  school  and  the  results  it 
seems  to  I'-ml  to,  and  Bhall  say  nothing  of  it  now, 
except  that  it  has  been  most  fully,  most  intelli- 
gently, and  l"'-i  Bet  forth  before  our  public  by  that 
graceful  scholar,  that  widely  read  theologian,  that 
accomplished  man  of  Letters, Octavius  Bi  Froth- 
ingham,  a  man  who  inherits  the  elegant  and 
fastidious  refinement  of  our  elder  New  England 
scholarship,  and  has  added  to  it  an  intellectual 
breadth,  a  mural  courage,  and  a  mental  vigor  which 
put  him  conspicuously  in  the  front  rank 
younger  school  of  theologians.1 

I  have  now,  as  time  allowed  me,  passed  in  review 
the  influences,  both  religious  and  dogmatic  or  intel- 
lectual, which  have  come  upon  American  Unitarian- 
ism  during  the  last  fifty  years,  while  1  have  been 

1  When  these  -  ipoken,  Mr.  Frothingham  washy  my 

side;  and  the  response  they  culled  forth  must  have  convinced  him, 
gratefully,  how  Little  the  noble  independence  "f  hu  career  had 
estranged  him  from  the  affection  and  honor  of  his  earlier  associates. 


40  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

a  close  and  interested  spectator  in  the  field.  There 
is  one  other  thing  which  seems  to  me  necessary,  in 
order  to  make  this  survey  complete.  I  have  said 
already  what  were  the  dismay  and  repugnance  with 
which  that  influence  was  first  seen  to  be  coming  on. 
To  quote  from  Professor  Norton's  address  on  "  The 
Latest  Form  of  Infidelity " :  "  In  Germany  the 
theology  of  which  I  speak  has  allied  itself  with 
atheism,  with  pantheism,  and  with  other  irreligious 
speculations,  that  have  appeared  in  those  meta- 
physical systems  from  which  the  God  of  Christianity 
is  excluded."  Some  of  you  may  no  doubt  remember 
when  the  very  name  German  was  a  sort  of  reproach, 
and  any  suspicion  of  that  line  of  speculation  was  a 
stigma  from  which  it  was  not  easy  for  the  young 
theologian  to  get  absolved.  Yet  you  have  also 
lived  to  see  one  who  as  a  young  theologian  most 
eagerly  and  with  warmest  sympathy  followed  that 
line  of  speculation,  come  nearer  perhaps  than  any 
other  man  of  education  among  us  to  the  common 
thought  and  heart ;  for,  when  I  recall  those  early 
influences,  I  seem  to  find  the  popular  embodiment 
of  them  all  in  James  Freeman  Clarke. 

Again,  it  seems  to  me  clear  that  the  life  of  re- 
ligious thought  which  has  come  down  to  us  survives 
not  in  spite  of,  but  in  virtue  of,  those  influences  I 
have  attempted  to  describe.  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  opinions  of  the  present  day  are  in  better  har- 
mony with  the  true  religious  life  than  those  which 
prevailed  fifty  years  ago.  I  do  not  think  they  are. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  not  for  us  to  disparage  that  body 
of  opinion  which  stayed  the  religious  life  of  Chan- 


THE   OPEN    CHANNEL.  41 

oing,  Tuckerman,  and  Henry  Ware.  What  I  do 
mean  is,  that  to  have  Bhut  down  the  [gainst 

an  intellectual  ti  ad  strong  as  was 

then  setting  in,  would  have  been  to  turn  what  till 
then  had  been  an  open  channel  into  a  little  land- 

1  creek,  and  to  shut  ua  out  effectually  from 
the  large  intellectual  currents  of  our  age.  The 
alternative  in  that  ould  ha  to  strand 

in  dry-rot,  or  to  effect  a  breach  by  violence  into  the 
wider  waters.     There  were  those   then    who 
willing  to  do  either :  Norton  the  one  thing,  Parker 
the  other  thing.     But  all  of  us,  I  think,  an-  now 

I  that  th«-  in  ia  that  taken 

by  the  younger  scholars  of  that  day.  -  Furness, 
Hedge,  and  Clarke  being  conspicuous  in  the  group, 
—  who  set  themselves  t"  deepen  the  channel  and 
keep  it  open,  and  won  for  us  who  follow  them  the 
free  navigation  of  the 

And  tin-  service  of  theirs  turned,  a-  you  will 
have  seen,  upon  the  same  point  which  Schleier- 
macher  made  the  pivot  of  his  first  appeal  t<>  the' 
German    people :    I    mean    his  ion   that    the 

religious  life — with  all  there  ia  in  it  of  beauty  and 
imfort,  aspiration  th,  and  hope  —  is 

its  own  evidence  and  its  own  exceeding  great  reward  ; 
and,  while  it  is  not  without  intellectual  foundation 
of  its  own,  is  yet  independent  of  all  form,  of  specu- 
lative opinion.  It  was  (humanly  speaking)  of  in- 
finite importance  for  ua  at  that  time  that  this 
conviction  should  he  well  established  Doubtless 
it  baa  had  the  ill  effect  of  making  some  men  loose, 
reckless    perhaps,   about    holding    firmly  any  clear 


42  GERMAN   INFLUENCE. 

conviction  at  all  about  an}Tthing.  But  it  has  had 
the  good  effect,  with  very  many  more  in  whom 
opinion  was  wavering,  to  hold  them  still  within 
the  blessed  circle  of  Christian  fellowship,  till 
character  should  be  ripened,  principle  braced,  and 
the  mental  tone  invigorated.  Thus  it  has  quickened 
and  refreshed  the  springs  of  spiritual  life  in  the 
veins  of  our  religious  organization  itself. 

Besides,  as  we  must  remember,  the  opinions  then 
most  dreaded  —  opinions  touching  the  supernatural 
and  miraculous  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus  —  were 
not  opinions  invented  by  theologians,  however 
radical.  On  the  contrary,  the  most  radical  of 
theologians  used  every  art  of  forced  interpretation, 
of  evasion,  and  of  intellectual  compromise,  to  escape 
the  pressure  of  those  opinions.  If  the  old  doctrinal 
view  of  the  incarnation,  the  atonement,  the  resur- 
rection, and  the  miraculous  works  of  Jesus  has  in 
any  mind  been  weakened,  dissolved,  or  washed 
away,  it  has  been  not  by  the  theology  which 
first  exhausted  every  shift  to  save  it,  but  by  the 
science  which  in  a  pitiless  flood  beat  and  encroached 
upon  it,  in  spite  of  those  poor  makeshifts.  Within 
these  fifty  years  many  of  us  have  had  thrust  upon 
us,  again  and  again,  first-hand  testimony  from  be- 
lievers of  facts  as  distinctly  miraculous  as  anything 
in  the  New  Testament,  —  facts  which  one  or  two 
hundred  years  ago  would  just  as  distinctly  have 
received  that  interpretation  ;  yet  we  know  perfectly 
well  that  such  testimony,  however  vouched,  would 
not  stand  an  hour  in  any  civilized  court  of  justice, 
and  so  we  quietly  lay  it  by,  whatever  be  our  private 


THE    BELIEF   IN*    MIRACL1  4.-'. 

opinion  of  its  validity.  It  is  just  bo  with  treatment 
of  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament  Thousands 
amon<  Ave  them  with  the  Bame  faith,  comfort, 

and  reverence  as  of  old  But  not  one  of  us  thinks 
of  defining  the  line  of  Christian  fellowship  by  the 
acceptance  of  them  ;  not  one  of  us  would  stake  a 
single  point  of  his  own  religious  faith  upon  them; 
ae  of  as  appeals  to  them  as  argument  for  the 
spiritual  truth,  but  at  most  as  what  that  "  truth  as 
it  l-  in  Jesus "  may  help  us  to  a<  cept 

This  change  in  the  general  intelligence  has  come 
about,  reluctantly  and  with  infinite  protest,  during 
the  entire  scientific  revolution  of  the  last  two  centu- 
Ii  has  not  been  franklj  accepted,  among  those 
calling  themselves  Christians,  till  comparatively  late 
in  the  fifty  years'  period  we  have  been  Looking  back 
upon.  But  it  had  to  reach  not  our  scientific  opin- 
ions merely,  but  our  religious  opinions.  If  the 
religious  life  survives  among  us  in  Bpite  of  it,  this 
result  is  due,  in  no  small  part,  to  the  influence  upon 
our  elder  Unitarianism  of  German  theology  from 
the  time  of  Schleiermacher. 


III. 

EOKTY   YEAES   LATER 

IN  the  course  which  comes  to  an  end  to-night,1 
you  have  been  studying  one  of  those  large 
movements  of  the  human  mind,  whose  advance  is 
measured  not  by  years,  but  by  centuries.  The  line 
of  thought  you  have  followed  reaches  back  some- 
thing more  than  five  hundred  years.  Certainly,  it 
is  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  that  have  come 
into  view,  since  the  slow  and  painful  dissolution 
began,  of  that  great  structure  which  we  call  the 
Catholic  civilization  of  the  Middle  Age,  —  a  new 
heaven,  revealed  in  the  system  of  Copernicus,  or 
through  the  telescope  of  Galileo;  a  new  earth, 
whose  law  of  development,  long  foreshadowed,  comes 
to  be  more  clearly  seen,  by  Darwin's  and  Spencer's 
help,  in  these  last  thirty  years. 

And  this  change  in  the  world's  outward  aspect 
is  but  a  type  of  the  more  radical  revolution  in  men's 
religious  thought,  —  a  revolution  far  costlier  in 
conflict,  tears,  and  blood.  Its  march  is  not  a  holi- 
day journey,  but  a  campaign.  Its  victories  are  won 
by  hard  and  painful  strokes.  The  campaign  is  not 
always  bloodless.     It  has  not  only  its  solitary  vic- 

1  An  Address  delivered  before  the  Brooklvn  Association  for 
Moral  and  Spiritual  Education,  May  30,  1886, 


TIIK   MARCH   OP   THOUGHT.  45 

tims,  like  Giordano  Bruno,  burnt  alive  in  I 

-thinking  ;  but  its  martyr  hosl 
the  Huguenots  and  the  English   Puritans,  who  died 
in  the  hope  of  founding  a  free  religious  common- 
wealth.    And,  ii"  doubt,  the  way  will  even  yet  be 
rough  and  painful,  t<»  us  or  to  our  children,  I 
the  present  movement  will  h.  fruit  in  a  fully 

rered   harmony  between   men's   knowledge  and 
their  faith,     h  is  well  to  think  of  our  Bubject  thus 

rting,  in  and  more  I 

ami  to  feel  that  we  ouj  aot, 

let  us  hope,  quite  unworthily)  in  the  which 

it  indicates  of  our  common  humanity. 
That  march  of  thought  you  have  Bought  t«>  inter- 

-  it  has  borne  upon  those  tw.> 
chief  interests  of  men  their  morals  and  their 
religion.  A  march  —  in  this  present  view  of  it  — 
(»f  five  centuri  in  out  ol  bscurity, 
and  has  been  followed   with    Blow   and    hard-won 

-  in  thes  ■  latter  days  into  a 
clearer  field,  we  have  a  better  understanding  of  what 
it  is,  and  whither  it  is  tending.  [I  this  later 
phase  of  it,  for  about  a  century  hack,  that  we 

in  particular,  the  name  "liberal  movement;'1  and 
you  have  asked  me  to  attempt  sunn-  n  of 

the  point  it  has  come  to,  and  the  I   presents 

to-day. 

1  am  glad,  and  a  littl  ■  proud,  to  have  this  task 

.'■d  me     But,  as  I  come  to  take  it  up,  I  find 

If  in  a  mood  which  I  should  like  to  explain  in 

advani  a     For,  I    must 

bo  plain  and  easy  a  busin  ss    -  1  might  have  hoped. 


46  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

The  earlier  phases  of  this  movement,  indeed,  it  is 
comparatively  easy  to  interpret,  as  they  settle  into 
shape  and  take  their  place  in  history.  We  are  well 
away  from  the  passion  and  turmoil  that  beset  them 
once.  We  think  of  them  now  as  steps  in  an  evo- 
lution determined  in  advance  by  the  very  nature  of 
human  thought  and  life.  We  feel  nothing  of  the 
dread  and  horror  the  Eeformers  felt  at  the  mighty 
genius  of  papal  Eome,  that  had  created  and  for  a 
thousand  years  controlled  the  Catholic  Empire  of 
the  West.  We  calmly  balance  the  right  and  wrong 
of  the  conflict  waged  against  it  by  the  valiant, 
heroic,  austere,  and  domineering  creed  which  gives 
a  lurid  glory  to  the  name  of  Calvin.  We  look  back, 
it  may  be,  with  easy  indifference  to  the  sectarian 
controversies  of  sixty  years  ago,  in  which  the  dear- 
est interests  of  mankind  seemed  then  to  be  at  stake. 
We  embark,  with  an  easy  confidence,  on  that  widen- 
ing and  gracious  stream,  which  bears  in  its  bosom 
the  literature,  the  science,  and  the  philosophic 
thought  of  our  nineteenth  century  ;  and  these,  by 
their  blending  with  our  religious  thought,  make  the 
very  definition  of  what  we  know  as  Liberalism.  So 
far,  our  view  is  quite  clear  and  undisturbed.  But 
when  we  come  square  up  to  the  hour  in  which  we 
live  and  speak,  and  try  to  interpret  that,  we  feel  a 
sudden  arrest.  The  abrupt  challenge  of  that  ques- 
tion —  What  is,  after  all,  the  aspect  and  the  promise 
of  this  very  moment  of  time  ?  —  must  give  us  pause. 
The  scientific  phase  we  talk  of,  indeed,  quite  con- 
fidently ;  but  of  the  social  phase,  which  envelops 
and  controls  the  scientific,  who  knows  what  symp- 


TWKKTY-FIYE    AND    BUTT-PTV  47 

toms  may  open  on  as  unawares,  this  very  coming 
month  ? 

One  may  be  pardoned  at  twenty-five  for  feeling 
very  sure  of  the  way  be  La  going,  and  very  sure  that 
the  great  world  is  going  tl  ■■  way  too.     Look- 

log  as  he  does  with  one  eye  — the  eye  of  ho] 
through  a  narrow  tube,  his  vision  is  more  keen  than 
wide.     Well  for  bim  that  it  Lb  so!     I  do  not  know 
how  he  should  ever  have  i  I  he  future, 

which  makes  the  field  where  In*  must  walk  and 
work,  if  he  had  t'»  Bee  in  advance  all  thai  he  will 
look  back  on  with  tli'-  eye  of  experience  before  his 
work  is  done.  Well  for  him  that  that  future  shows 
to  liim  in  ill'-  color  of  his  own  hope  I  Bis  aim  in 
life  (we  will  suppose)  is  idea]  and  intellectual,  not 
mercenary  and  base.  In  thai  temper,  he  easily 
finds  things  aa  he  wants  to  find  them.  Faith  fur- 
nishes forth  tin'  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  and 
the  evidence  of  things  not  seen.  Tim-,  "  Y«>ur 
young  men  Bhall  see  visions;  n  and  tin-,  aa  Lord 
Bacon  tells  as,  is  lit'''-  contrast  against  that  dim, 
remote,  uncertain  glance  upon  the  future,  hinted  in 
the  phrase  that  follows:  "Your  old  men  shall 
dream  dreams,"  -knowing,  alas!  that  they  are 
dreams,  whose  real  being    i-  of  the  past 

But  the  pardon  found  so  easily  at  twenty-five 
will  not  he  given  him  if  fort}  years  Liter  he  has 
only  the  same  Banguine  confidence,  if  he  still  finds 
the  situation  as  clear  ami  easy  t«>  be  interpreted  as 
he  thought  it  then.  life  has  brought  him  in  sharp 
collision  with  facta  and  forces,  whose  existence  he 
had  hardly   begun    to   suspect.      The   "stream    of 


48  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

tendency,"  whose  course  he  thought  so  smooth  and 
certain,  turns  out  to  be  a  turbulent  flood,  whose 
twisting  eddies  perplex  his  bearings  as  he  tosses  and 
spins  upon  its  surface.  Those  forty  years  will  have 
brought  to  the  front  many  a  revolution  of  opinion, 
many  a  political  upheaval,  the  eclipse  of  many  a 
shining  reputation,  many  a  social  change  wrought 
through  blind  passion,  and  involving  unforeseen 
events.  They  will,  further,  have  brought  such 
advance  and  widening-out  of  general  knowledge  as 
to  make  the  visible  sphere  he  moves  in  quite 
another,  a  wider,  a  more  bewildering  thing.  His 
thought  moves  painfully  and  slow  amid  the  new 
surroundings.  He  envies  and  admires,  it  may  be, 
the  alacrity  with  which  younger  minds  find  free 
play  in  a  scene  that  to  him  grows  dim  and  unfa- 
miliar. He  begins  to  feel  that  a  younger  hand 
must  take  and  carry  forward  that  torch  of  truth  on 
which  his  grasp  is  slackening.  He  is  less  hardy 
and  single-minded  in  his  view,  not  because  he  has 
less  faith,  but  because  he  knows  more  things.  He 
sees  more  widely  than  he  did,  and  so  sees  not  so  far 
or  sharply  in  one  direction  as  he  thought  he  did. 
And  his  opinion  is  likely  to  be  the  calm  assent  that 
this  is  so  upon  the  whole,  rather  than  the  ardent 
assertion  that  this  is  surely  so,  and  cannot  he 
otherwise. 

Now  I  stand,  in  comparison  with  some  of  you, 
at  the  end  of  that  term  of  forty  years ;  and  I  stancl 
in  something  of  that  attitude  of  disadvantage. 
And,  to  simplify  the  task  you  have  given  me,  I 
must  begin  by  narrowing  down  my  view :  not  try 


TO    LIMIT    THK    FIELD.  49 

to  -pan  the  wide  horizon,  but  to  look  understand- 
inelv  at  one  or  two  things  that  lit-  very  ne 
the  present  aspect  of  the  liberal  movement  i 
by  right  to  Include  a  Leal  that   I  canni 

much  as  touch  upon.     Hardly  a  hinl  mple, 

of  those    most   interesting  and  kindred    phae 
it  among  the  leaders  of  liberal  thought  in  England; 
still  less  ' he  later  as] 
siicriii.iti'.ii,  or  the  instructive  criticism  tb 
from   the    universities    of    II  illand,   or   tl 
precious,  and  heroic  Btrri  I  the- 

ology   that   appear    here    and    there  —  in    France 

tally,  but  also  in  Italy  and  even  Spain  —  in 
the  field  bo  long  given  o\ er  to 
tween  the  spiritual  despotism  of  R  >me  and  blank 
materialistic  unbelief  flaming  out  now  and  then 
in  hol  revolutionary  hate.  All  these  would  be 
needed,  to  lill  out  an  adequate  picture  of  our  time, 
taken  from  the  point  of  view  you  b 
me.     Bui    1   am  afraid  thai   a  ski  •  and 

ambitious  would  be  Ineffective  and  thin.     It  is  an 
ungrateful    task    to   summarize   ■    volume    in    the 
limits   of  a   half-hour's   essay.     And   because 
haw  applied  to  me,  who  have   Bpent    th< 
years,   and    more,   in    living   contact    with    certain 

d  phases  of  the  liberal  movement,  and  i 
a  far-away  study  of  it  as  a  whole,  I   -hall  deal 
only  that   pan   of  the  wide  field  in  which   I   have 
been  an  interested  eyewil  i  I  in  a  small 

a  worker.  It  is  only  with  that  small  segment  of 
our  Bubject  that  I  propose  to  deal;  only  there,  if 
anywhere,  my  word  can  be  of  any  use. 


50  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

Taking  this  point  of  view,  then,  I  shall  briefly 
trace  some  lines  of  comparison  between  the  present 
and  earlier  stages  of  the  liberal  movement  in  these 
three  respects,  —  its  temper,  its  thought,  and  its 
aim ;  and  with  this  I  shall  mingle  as  I  may  some 
consideration  of  those  practical  aspects  of  it  most 
plainly  bearing  upon  the  future. 

I.  And  first,  as  I  look  back  upon  that  lapse 
of  time,  I  do  not  seem  to  find  liberalism  so  light 
of  heart  as  forty  years  ago.  Nay,  I  easily  fancy 
that  then  the  world  itself  was  younger,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  time  was  younger,  as  well  as  we  who 
were  living  our  youth  then.  Grave  events,  cruel 
disappointments,  some  of  the  darkest  tragedies  of 
history,  have  stamped  their  mark  upon  this  period 
of  time.  How  easily  and  how  eagerly  the  human 
heart  looks  for  the  present  coming  of  an  age  of 
gold !  How  heavy  and  quick  the  shadow  falls 
upon  that  fair  vision  !  Some  of  you  may  recall 
the  glow  of  hope  that  greeted  the  revolutions  of 
1848,  that  year  of  wonders,  whose  promise  of 
liberty  and  peace  was  followed  so  soon  by  such 
thunderstorms  and  shocks  of  war.  That  type 
shows  us  in  the  world  of  politics  what  we  so  often 
find  in  the  world  of  morals  and  thought.  It  seems 
impossible  that  with  anybody  the  view  of  things 
should  be  so  roseate  and  cheerful  now  as  it  was 
with  almost  everybody  then.  Our  time,  in  com- 
parison with  that,  looks  anxious,  critical,  and  full 
of  doubt.  It  is  a  long  way  from  the  serene  gospel 
according  to  Emerson,  in  which  all  the  higher 
faiths  are  taken  for  granted,  to  the  labored  theistic 


3   OPTIMIS  51 

arguments  which  are  the  last  product  of  the 
cord  School.     It  is  a  long  way  from  the  easy  op- 
timism that  explored  with  bo  confident  touch   our 
chief  social  horrors,  drunkenn  ■•.  and 

crime,  to  that  sterner  mood  in  which  we  live,  tem- 
pered by  the  fire  and  blood  of  civil  war,  or  taught 
by  the  Blow  revolution   in    -  ad   the    s 

that  has  been  proceeding  It   is  a  long 

from  that  fair  Arcadia   of    Brook    Farm,   with   its 
harmless  socialistic   theories   and 
rather  futile  idealizing  of  daily  toil,  to  the  obst 
labor-battles  of  this  last  month,  and  the  red-handed, 
death-dealing  anarchism  of  Chicago. 

The  first  aspect,  then,  in  which  the  libera]  move- 
ment presents  to  my  mind  at  this  time,  is  the 
contrast  that  it  shows  to  the  ad  optimistic 
idealism  of  forty  3  Looked  oally, 
the  change  is  a  little  saddening.  Bui  if  we  look 
to  the  temper  of  mind  that  meets  it,  we  find  that 
i  healthy  and  a  promising  change.  The  manly 
and  brave  temper  is  tli.it  which  chooses  to  l""k 
in  the  face  and  see  the  worst  of  them,  rather 
than  brood  upon  them  in  the  illusive  glow  of 
Utopian  dreams.  Anything  like  advance  to  b  bet- 
ter knowledge  of  the  situation  is  had  by  dealing 
first-hand  with  the  facta  of  human  nature,  includ- 
ing its  malign  and  dangerous  •  11  as 
its  radiant  possibilities.  That.  1  think,  is  more 
the  temper  of  liberalism  in  our  day  than  it  was 
forty  vears  ago.  Those  darker  facts  of  men's  life, 
those  evil  pas  E  tin1  mind,  are  what  religion- 
ists of    earlier   time   hated   and    fought    against    as 


52  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

enemies  of  God,  desiring  to  see  their  face  openly. 
And  in  this  regard,  we  have  better  understanding 
than  earlier  liberals  had  of  the  heroic  side  of  that 
elder  faith. 

For,  in  its  first  form,  religious  liberalism  is  simply 
a  movement  away  from  the  creeds  and  institutions 
of  the  past,  with  the  heavy  bondage  they  laid  upon 
the  human  spirit,  toward  the  breadth,  the  freedom, 
the  wealth  of  the  world's  larger  life.  The  fresh 
consciousness  of  this  is  a  keen  sense  of  emancipa- 
tion, it  is  the  joy  of  a  new-found  liberty.  Deliver- 
ance from  the  ancient  terror,  —  terror  before  the 
inexorable  Judge  whom  theologians  have  depicted  ; 
terror  of  devils  that  assailed  the  soul  in  all  un- 
guarded hours ;  terror  of  the  eternal  hell,  whose 
fiery  torment  has  so  been  held  out  before  the  naked 
conscience ;  terror  at  the  thought  of  blasphemy  in 
casting  off  beliefs  that  have  grown  to  be  flat  unrea- 
son, while  the  mind  yet  shrinks  from  looking  its 
honest  thought  in  the  face,  —  deliverance  from  that 
manifold  "  terror  of  the  Lord  "  is  enough,  at  first,  to 
fill  the  soul  with  a  great  joy.  It  seems,  for  the 
time,  as  if  it  were  alone  ample  to  supply  the  fulness 
of  the  religious  life.  Only  leave  that  vague  dark 
dread  behind,  and  the  whole  soul  is  flooded  with 
kindly  light. 

That  is  the  first  flush  of  feeling  in  the  new  eman- 
cipation ;  and  that  was,  very  largely,  the  spirit  of 
the  younger  liberalism  with  which  we  compare  our 
own.  It  was  as  if  we  had  abolished  those  dark 
facts  of  life,  of  which  the  old  dogma  was  but  the 
symbol ;  as  if  there  were  no  longer  any  such  thing 


THE   CHANGS   FOB   <■  53 

epravity  in  human  nature,  when  we  had 
denied  the  d  uption  ; 

re  no  divine  wrath  that  blazed  against 
wrongdoing,  when  once  we  had  got  over  our  dread 
of  a  future  hell  A  radiant  humanity  found  nothing 
anywhere  but  good  Misery  and  pain,  it  thought, 
nishe  I  at  a  word  out  of  the  conditions 
of  men's  Uvea  Ah:  but  it  forgot  that  chaos 
horror  of  men's  passions  which  have  furnished 
the  beginning  the  imagery,  the  apprehension,  and 

the  foretaste  i  aal  d n. 

We  have  learned,  too,  thai   religioi 

:    in  the  soul,  is  its  own  joy  and  exceeding 
great  reward     Bere,  too,  we  have 
understanding  ancient  creed     With  all  its 

narrowness  and  error,  we  still  see  that  while  it  was 
honestly  and  bravely  held,  it  brought  t<>  it-  adhe- 
rents :m  heroic  temper  t->  fight  stoutly  .1-  the  Lord's 
champions  in  the  battle  against  wrong.     It  brought, 

of  heart  and  a  peace  which  ] . 
understanding,    from    tin-   men  that   it   v. 

religion, —  that  it  meant  the  surrender  of  the  soul 
to  that  which  was  worshipped  as  highest,  holiest, 
best  That  heroism  remained,  that  joy  and  peace 
remained,  of  the  faith  that  had  hern  as  the  soul  of 

gOOdne88  in  an  evil  <i 

At  least,  if  it  did  not  remain,  we  '  rned 

•  t«>  understand  its  loss;  for  the  old  foes  have 

been  about  US  with  new  fac  B.     And,  in  tl. 

years  since  the  early  flush  of  our  newly  emancipated 

liberalism,  there  i>  n<>t.  bo  much  t<»  boast  of  our  own 

3  in  dealing  with  those  "Id  foes  ;i-  to 


54  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

give  us  any  very  complacent  sense  of  the  superiority 
of  our  ways  over  the  former  ways.  And  so  the  pres- 
ent temper  of  liberalism  is  soberer,  more  modest  of 
itself,  less  apt  and  confident  in  its  claim,  less  proud 
of  its  achievement ;  and  it  is  well  for  us  that  it  is  so. 
II.  The  second  aspect  of  the  liberal  movement 
now,  in  comparison  with  forty  years  ago,  is  that  it 
seeks  a  scientific  rather  than  a  sentimental,  mystic, 
or  idealistic  expression  of  itself.  Any  movement  of 
religious  thought  implies  these  two  things.  It  aims, 
first,  to  state  with  authority  what  is  the  deepest 
ground  of  trust  and  the  most  imperative  law  of 
conduct:  that  is  the  sphere  of  personal  religion, 
dealing  with  the  individual  heart  and  conscience. 
It  aims,  secondly,  to  train  and  stimulate  the  intelli- 
gence, by  setting  forth,  both  to  the  mind  and  im- 
agination, the  largest  and  most  general  view  we  are 
able  to  get  of  the  universe  and  of  human  life  in  its 
broadest  relations  :  that  is  the  sphere  of  religion 
intellectually,  dealing  with  the  speculative  under- 
standing. Now,  regarding  the  former,  I  do  not  see 
that  religion  as  a  spiritual  force  in  men's  lives  has 
changed  in  the  least  from  what  it  was  when  the 
Vedic  Hymns  or  the  Hebrew  Psalms  or  the  trage- 
dies of  JEschylus  were  composed.  Life  brings  men 
face  to  face,  now  as  then,  with  the  same  great  won- 
der and  glory  of  the  heavens,  with  the  same  stormy 
passions  or  gentler  affections  of  the  heart,  with  the 
same  bitter  experiences  of  pain  and  grief  and  guilt, 
with  the  same  dark  problem  and  mystery  of  the 
human  lot,  As  to  either  of  these,  I  do  not  see  that 
our  attitude,  morally  regarded,  has  changed  at  all 


KM 

since  the  jorded  thought.     The 

only  solution  to  the  enigma  of  life,  as  it  touches  us 
;  inally,  La  that  which  consists  in  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  heart  and  to  the  conditions  of 
each  marts  particular  lot  in  life.  The  key  of  this 
reconciliation  is  found,  now  in  the  words 
"  obedience  and  trust  and  help."  Thes  have 
to  do  with  life  itself,  not  with  our  thoughts  about 
their  meaning  i-  to  the  1.  inder- 
standing;  the  method  they  indicate  i>  tip-  method 
nut  of  soience,  but  of  faith.  By  that  method,  and 
by  that  alone,  able  t"  Bolve  the  problem  <<f 
life  practically,  which  we  can  never  Bolve  th.-Mr.-ti- 
callv.  That  practical  solving  of  it  is  what  we  call 
Balvation.  Toward  any  speculative  solution  of  it.  I 
am  unable  to  see  that  science  or  philosophy  has 
advanced  us  a  single  -:••{>. 

Now,  it   i-  just   within   these  fortj  that 

science  has  made  its  most  brilliant  effort, and  -•■••ins 
t<>  have  all  hut  fulfilled  it-  promise,  to  do  that 
thing.     Consider,  for  a  moment,  the  change  that  has 
come  about  in  our  mental  habit     Fort  ago 

the  most  advanced  religious  thinking  was  purely  of 
tin-  type  known  as  transcendental;  that  is,  it  was 
speculation  upon  data  and  postulates  furnished  by 
tip-   religious   sentiment     The    three   great    words 

which  more  than  any  other  marked  the  advent  and 
set  the  key  of  that  phase  "f  the  liberal  movement 
were  spoken  in  Emerson's  "Nature"  in  1836,  his 
appeal  to  the  ''American  Scholar"  in  1837,  and  his 
Divinity  School  Address  in  1838.  The  last  two  of 
I  1  as   they  were   Bpoken;  and  —  though 


56  FOETY   YEAES   LATEE. 

dimly  and  confusedly,  out  of  my  deep  ignorance  — 
I  felt  with  a  sense  I  can  yet  recall  the  breath  and 
pulse  of  the  new  era  then  opening  upon  us.  And  I 
do  not  yet  see  that  that  fresh  inspiration  has  lost 
its  charm  or  its  power  or  its  use. 

But,  as  soon  as  we  think  of  what  now  appeals  to 
our  chief  intellectual  interest,  we  find  ourselves  in 
another  atmosphere,  —  chill,  gray,  and  bracing,  when 
we  compare  it  with  that  warmth  and  glow.  We 
have  lost  the  secret  of  that  willing  and  radiant  faith. 
We  yield  belief  only  where  fact  has  had  the  verifica- 
tion of  scientific  tests ;  we  feel  assured  only  where 
experience  has  bodied  forth  the  meaning  of  the 
word.  Thus  the  great  and  certain  verities  of  the 
religious  life,  as  they  were  then  thought  of,  —  God, 
Freedom,  and  Immortality,  —  we  submit  to  tests 
which  no  one  demanded  then,  and  bestow  upon 
them  interpretations  which  no  one  would  have 
admitted  then.  Theories  of  the  universe,  which 
formerly  were  purely  speculative  or  religious,  —  the 
origin  of  the  visible  heavens,  the  development  of 
life  upon  our  planet,  the  law  of  the  Providence  that 
rules  in  human  history  ;  theories  of  life,  dealing  with 
the  laws  of  health,  the  laws  of  character,  the  laws 
of  sanity,  the  laws  of  population,  wealth  and  pov- 
erty, the  laws  of  crime, — are  constructed  on  scien- 
tific data  and  dealt  with  by  scientific  methods.  For 
providential  rule,  we  have  the  law  of  evolution ;  for 
the  "  sacred  history  "  of  our  younger  days,  we  have 
the  study  of  "  comparative  religions,"  which  becomes 
as  mere  a  branch  of  human  science  as  that  of  com- 
parative philology;  and  so  with  all  the  rest. 


SCIENTIFIC  Tin:: 

This,  I  Bay,  La  the  change  which  has  bout 

within    the    recollectioD    of   Bome   of   us,   marking 
strongly  one  present  a  liberal  movement 

On  thf  whole,  it  is  better  to  welcome  this  phac 
our  religious  thought,  and  make  the  best  of  it,  than 
to  criticise  or  vituperate  it  as  Carlyle  and  Ruskin 
done  so  hitterly.1  Bui  we  may  say  of  it  that 
it  attempts  too  much.  Take  the  two  phrases  most 
commonly  in  use  to  express  the  conscious  attitude 
of  men's  thought  toward  the  highest  of  intellectual 
problems,  —  "a  Scientific  Theism  "and  "the  Edea  of 
God,"  —  and  I  think  we  may  both  of  them 

that,  bo  far  as  it  is  a  religious  theism  we  mean,  and 
not   merely  a  cosmic  speculation,  il 
premises,    it    underlies    our    |  i  *,   and    makes 

a  supplement    t<»   our   deductions:   like    Newton's 
"  s.  holium  "  at    the  end   of   his   I  w  bich 

nivr^  mi  eloquent  Btatemenl  of  bis  own  belief,  but 
ertainly  not  proved  by  his  differential  calculus. 
So  tlw  form  of  theistic  argument  most  familiar  t»»  us 
at  this  day  may  be  regarded  as  the  cropping  out 
conviction  implanted  by  a  devout  Christian  train- 
ing rather  than  a  logical  deduction  from  the  prem- 
bhat  have  been  assumed.  And  the  result,  upon 
the  whole,  we  may  find  t"  he  this:  that  religion, 
with  its  implicit  faiths,  abides  as  a  primary  element 

1  Thus  from  Mr.  Kit-Liu  :   "I  know  <>f  nothing  that  hat 

taught  the  youth  of  our  ti <'xc.pt  that  their  fathers 

ami  their  mothers  winkles ;  that  tin-  world  began  in  accident  and 
will  end  in  darkness  ;  that  honor  is  a  folly,  ambition  a  virtue,  charity 

a  rice,  poverty  a  crime,  an. I    rascality  the   means  of  all  weal 

the  sum  of  all  wisdom.     Both  Mr.  Carlyle  and  I  knew  perfectly 

well  all  along  what  would  he  the  outcome  of  that  education." 


58  FORTY   YEAES    LATER. 

in  human  nature ;  that  it  must  be  accepted,  where 
it  is  accepted  at  all,  on  its  own  merits,  and  not  on 
those  of  any  logic  ;  that  natural  science  must  waive 
the  attempt  to  solve  that  problem  of  the  universe 
which  has  proved  beyond  the  grasp  of  speculative 
philosophy.  Thus  we  learn  that  the  true  province  of 
Keligion  must  be  experience  and  duty  of  the  life 
that  now  is,  not  vain  strivings  to  fathom  the  Eternal 
and  Unknown ;  and  the  true  province  of  Science 
will  be  to  explain  not  the  ultimate  ground  of  things, 
or  the  primary  motive  of  right  and  duty,  but  the 
real  conditions  under  which  men's  work  on  earth 
may  be  more  effectually  done. 

III.  And  so  we  come  to  a  third  aspect  of  the 
liberal  movement,  more  characteristic  and  more  full 
of  powerful  appeal  to  our  hope  and  fear  than  either 
of  the  others.  I  mean,  that  the  questions  it  raises 
are  not  those  of  theory,  but  of  life, — questions  of 
ethics  and  questions  of  social  order.  There  is  a 
singular  consent,  all  along  the  line,  in  turning  away 
from  interests  merely  speculative,  and  facing  the 
problems  of  human  life.  Not  merely  that  societies 
for  "  ethical  culture  "  take  the  place  of  societies  pro- 
fessedly religious  ;  not  merely  that  greater  attention 
is  given,  in  pulpits  and  religious  journals,  to  the 
social  questions  of  the  day ;  but  that,  with  multi- 
tudes, their  real  religion,  the  only  religion  they  pre- 
tend to  know,  is  that  which  deals  with  secular 
concerns  and  is  inspired  with  secular  passion.  A 
man's  religion  is  that  which  makes  to  him  the  ideal 
thing  in  life  ;  that  which  he  believes  in  so  heartily 
that  he  holds  any  other  gain,  or  life  itself,  cheap  in 


3TION8   Of   LI  IF.   NOT   THEORY. 

comparison  with  it.  Tims,  that  which  maki 
nihilist  or  an  anarchist  ready  to  Buffer  and  d 
his  horrible  creed  is  the  same  religious  frenzy  that 
inspires  a  cannibal  war-dance,  and  that  made  the 
priests  of  Baal  howl  aloud  and  gash  themselves  with 
knives.  The  fervent  passion  of  a  "  Nationalist," 
whose  true  religion  is  [reland,  is  toe  Bame  thing 
with  t li<'  Messianic  p  s,  which 

salted  into  a  symbol,  and  made  the 
central  fact  of  religious  history.  I  s  ci  ed  of 
Calvin,  for  which  men  freely  fought  and  bled  three 
hundred  3  >,  has  faded  to  a  mere  chimera;  it 

is  no  longer  a  genuine  religion  —  that  is.  a  flaming 
and  dominant  passion  of  the  human  heart  — with 
anybody  in  our  day.  What  has  come  to  take  its 
place  is  not  the  serene  platitudes  of  a  speculative 
theology  ;  not  the  "cosmic  theism  "or  the  M  scientific 
theism"  which  builds  itself  up,  as  an  intellectual 
deduction,  upon  the  foundations  of  modern  knowl- 
edge.    It    is  rather  the  keen   interest,  the  patient 

service,  th  1   Bacrifii f   personal   indulgence,   the 

spirit  kindling  to  moral  enthusiasm  and  a  passion  of 
self-devotion,  that  drafts  and  enlists  men 
champions  in   the  battle   for   right,  for  truth,  for 
human  welfare.     Just  in  proportion  as  the  fin 
old  controversy  fade,  as  the  mind  falls  back,  baffled 

and   weary,   from    its   search    after    the    infinite  and 

unknowable,  just  in  that  proportion  the  faith  and 

zeal,  of  which  the  human  heart   has  shown 
capable,  come  to  be  devoted  to  that  attainable  ideal 

which  in  pious  phrase  we  call  the  Kingdom  of  (  •  I 
npon  earth. 


60  '  FORTY   YEARS   LATER. 

At  least,  that  great  hope  which  lays  hold  upon 
the  future,  even  (we  may  say)  the  possibility  of  any 
religion  at  all  for  mankind  in  the  coming  time, 
seems  to  depend  on  the  vital  reality  of  that  phase  in 
our  movement  which  is  ethical  and  social.  It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  denial  of  or  indifference  toward 
those  sublimer  conceptions,  —  a  Living  God  as  the 
soul  of  things,  and  Immortal  Life  as  the  inspiration 
of  men's  hope :  on  the  contrary,  the  more  vividly 
these  are  conceived,  the  deeper  and  surer  the  motive 
of  that  service  of  humanity.  But  "  pure  religion 
and  undefilecl,"  as  James  says,  consists  in  that  very 
service,  not  in  any  dreams  or  speculations  or  opin- 
ions of  men.  And,  of  that  liberal  movement  we  are 
studying,  the  most  hopeful  aspect  is  that  it  has  en- 
tered upon  that  phase. 

It  were  a  waste  of  time  to  cite  here  the  innumer- 
able illustrations  that  appear  in  every  channel  where 
there  is  the  least  activity  of  religious  thought.  But 
our  business  is  with  that  which  is  properly  included 
in  "  the  liberal  movement."  Wherever,  indeed, 
those  human  feelings  and  motives  have  colored  the 
exposition  of  religion,  there  we  find  a  liberalism  of 
heart  wider  than  any  creed  and  embracing  many. 
But  it  has  often  happened  that  religious  thinkers, 
professedly  liberal,  have  been  the  pioneers  and  the 
shapers-out  of  work  taken  up  then  and  pushed  by 
other  hands.  Such  work  may  be  semi-secular,  like 
education  and  prison-reform,  which  got  their  first 
great  impulse  so ;  or  it  may  be  purely  humanitary 
and  moral.  I  have  just  received  from  that  veteran 
leader  in  religious  liberalism,  Francis  William  New- 


RELIGION    OV   HUMANITY.  I  1 

man,  now  just  closing  his  eighty-first  year,  —  a  man 
whose  singular  intellectual  candor  an 
tivity  of  thought  go  along  with  an  equal  fen 
spirit  touching  all  human  needs,  —  a  pamphlet  in 
which  he  Bets  forth,  with  more  than  youthful  ardor 

uviction,  the  five  "new  crusades"  of  oui 

[Is  of   model  ty,  — 

slavery,  now  happily  extinct ;  drunken] 

tute  right  and  fostered  by  executive  favor;  the 
shelter  of  vice  under  lawa  especially  offensive 
insulting  to  women  ;    that  Bpecia]  horror  of 
capitals  assailed  by  the  Whit     i  I.    gue;  and 

tnormous  guilt  of  w  i  :,  court  of 

appeal  for  nations,    [nail  these  —  and  much 

in  the  peril  that  comes  with  tin-  new  conditio 
modern  industry,  the  distress  and  alarm  of  the  great 
labor-battle,  the  "  red  terror"  irchy,  the 

chronic  task  of  disinfecting  our  party  politics  we 
Bee  the  need  both  of  tl  •.  calm  guidance  <»f  the 

scientific  spirit,  and  of  a  deep  religious  devotion  of 
the  hearl  to  human  welfare. 
These  things,  and  Buch  as  these,  are  in  out  day 
1  tasks  of  "  the  Religion  of  Humanity." 
It  is  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  our  liberal  move- 
ment from  the  beginning,  that  practical  and  not 
theoretical    in!  should   be  its  main   concern  ; 

that  it  should  more  and  mure  become  an  ethical  and 
social,  not  a  speculative  movement  ;  thai  its  learning 
shall  not  degenerate  to  pedantry,  <u-  its  higher  cul- 
ture to  dilettantism ;  that  its  science  shall  be  turned 
fnun  being  a  mere  minister  "f  material  gain,  or  a 

method  and  illustration  of   barren  meditation 


62  FORTY   YEARS    LATER. 

upon  the  universe,  into  a  help  and  a  guide  for  the 
effectual  working-out  of  those  most  necessary  tasks. 

These,  then,  appear  to  me  the  most  instructive 
aspects  of  the  liberal  movement,  as  it  has  come  down 
to  us,  to  be  guided  by  our  hands  :  1.  An  increasing 
seriousness  of  temper,  as  compared  with  the  buoyant 
optimism  of  forty  years  ago ;  2.  The  clearer  recogni- 
tion and  acceptance  of  the  method  of  science,  as 
compared  with  that  of  pure  sentiment  and  specula- 
tion ;  3.  The  attempting  of  positive  tasks,  or  the 
study  of  positive  problems  of  ethics,  especially  of 
social  ethics,  instead  of  resting  content  in  the  intel- 
lectual joy  and  pride  of  discovery  of  truth,  or  eman- 
cipation from  mental  error.  Into  this  large  and 
generous  and  real  and  consecrated  liberalism,  it  is 
(as  we  may  trust)  our  great  privilege  to  have  at 
length  arrived. 


IV. 
FREDERIC    BENRY    BED 

DEL  BE]  KxE'S  .  randfather,  Lemuel  II 
a  country  minister  in  \v  ..  .\;       ichu- 

•  l  List  in  the  time  <>f  the  Revolution, 
whose  patriot  neighbors  made  life  a  burden  to  him 
in  consequence.  To  the  eldest  of  his  sis  boys  there 
fell,  as  by  birthright,  the  privilege  of  going  t  i 

while  a  b1  ardy  youn  ,  Levi, 

brain  and  hand,  was  apprenticed  to  a  master  mason  ; 
but  at  the  age  of  t  wenty,  or  thereabout,  laying  down 
brick  and  trowel,  resolutely  won  hia  way  to  the 
only  higher  education  then  known,  and  became  a 
professor  of  logic  and  metaphysics  in  Barvard  Col- 

and  the  father  of  our  eminent  theologian  and 
teacher,  the  subject  of  this  sketch.  The  son  kept  in 
bis  mind  a  pretty  image  of  hia  maternal  grand- 
mother, daughter  of  President  Holyoke  i  I  II  irvard, 
whom  tradition  pictured  as  a  bright  young  girl, 
standing  on  an  insulated  stool  and  holding  an  elec- 
tric chain,  while  Bhe  offered  her  Laughing  lip  in 
challenge  to  whatever  daring  youth  should  advance 
to  touch.  Experimental  Bcience  was  young  and  gay 
in  those  good  days!  A  great-uncle  on  the  same 
side  was  Edward  Augustus  Bolyoke,  a  physician  of 
Salem,  who  died  in  1829  at  something  over  ilu-  ace 


64  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

of  one  hundred,  —  a  man  of  methodical  ways,  ad- 
dicted to  scientific  observation,  and  of  a  repute  in 
his  profession  which,  I  suppose,  gave  to  his  young 
relative,  who  knew  him,  the  feeling,  which  he  never 
quite  outgrew,  that  in  choosing  another  path  he  had 
forsaken  his  own  true  vocation. 

Of  such  parentage  and  antecedents  Frederic  Henry 
Hedge  was  born,  on  the  12th  of  December,  1805,  two 
years  younger  than  Emerson,  three  years  younger 
than  Eurness,  his  two  nearest  life-long  friends.  Of 
his  school  days  little  can  be  known,  since  his  schol- 
arly calling  was  declared  so  early  that,  as  he  has 
told  me,  he  never  had  a  purer  delight  in  letters  than 
in  committing  to  memory,  at  seven,  the  Eclogues  of 
Virgil  in  the  original,  and  at  ten  he  knew  by  heart 
long  passages  of  Homer  in  Greek.  This  means  that 
he  could  have  had  no  companions  in  study,  and  no 
class  rivalry  to  cramp  or  cheer.  But  a  young  man 
of  uncommon  genius  and  scholarship,  George  Ban- 
croft, then  in  college,  became  an  inmate  of  the 
father's  family,  and  tutor  to  the  boy ;  and  it  shows 
in  the  father  a  singular  confidence  in  both,  that, 
when  the  boy  was  thirteen  and  the  tutor  a  graduate 
of  eighteen,  they  were  sent  together  across  the 
ocean  to  become,  the  one  a  student  of  philosophy, 
and  the  other  a  pupil  in  a  classical  school,  in  Ger- 
many, where,  absolutely  among  strangers,  he  passed 
the  next  four  years.  I  once  persuaded  him,  when 
he  had  pleased  himself  for  some  weeks  in  recalling 
incidents  of  this  period,  to  put  them  in  the  form  of 
an  autobiographical  sketch.  It  was  in  the  interval 
just  before  his  grievous   malady   of  the  spring  of 


AT   SCHOOL    IN    GERMANY. 

]     7;   and  it   was  in  a  respite  of   that  lingi 
torment  that  he  gave  me  the  few  pages  th  I 
low  —  the  only  consecutive  memorials  that  lm  has 
left  behind,  of  a  career  in  which  there  was  bo  much 
of  interest  to  tell :  — 

At  the  age  of  thirteen,  bavin-  first  been  duly  in- 
stitute. 1  in  the  mysterii  i  rman  language  at  a 
private  pension,  I  was  pul  I  ium  in 
north  Germany,  situated  in  a  romantic  valley  among 
the  southward-si  retching  Bpurs  of  the  rlarz,  perm 
by  a  small  stream  fordable  in  summer,  I  to  a 
roaring  torrenl  by  the  melting  inter,  and 
washing  the  base  of  the  II             ,  a  mountain  a 

what   less   than   a  thousand    feet   m    In  : 

The  school    buildings,  a   con  ogles 

with  other  structures,  including  a  church,  had 

been   a    monastery:   the   boys'  i-  tretching 

two    or    three    corridors,    wei 

formerly  occupied    by    the    monks, 

[uare,  with  little  bedi 
They  had  stone  Qoors  and  were  heated  by 

to   every  tWO    rOOm8,  the    mouth  open:: 
the  corridor  and   closed   by  a   lock   of  which  the 
factor  kept,  the  key.     Underneath  the  portion  of  the 
building  inhabited    by  the  officers  and  scholars  was 

the  crypt,  lined  with  perpendicular  tombefc 
faced  with  an   effigy  in   relief  of  the  sainted  brother 
who    slumbered    beneath.       Through    this    crypt    the 
truant  boy,  admitted   1  ■;.  ,  ed  as 

janitor,  had    to   paS8,  with   such   COU]  he   might, 

when  after  dark  the  upper  doors  were  closed.  The 
School  church  was  also  the  church  of  the  Flecken, 
the   small    town   that   leaned   to  the  cloister,  though 

5 


66  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

governed  by  a  magistrate  of  its  own.  The  students 
with  the  teachers  occupied  the  transept,  the  towns- 
people the  nave. 

My  coming  was  awaited  with  much  curiosity  by 
the  youths  who  were  to  be  my  fellow-students. 
They  expected  to  see  a  copper-colored  savage :  they 
were  met  by  a  boy  as  white  as  the  whitest  of  their 
own  race,  with  no  more  of  the  savage  than  belongs  to 
the  boy  in  every  clime. 

And  yet  these  fellows  were  acquainted  with  the 
history  of  this  country,  and  could  have  passed  a 
better  examination  concerning  it  than  the  average 
of  American  boys  in  those  days.  They  knew  that 
the  people  of  the  United  States  were  English,  not 
Indians.  But  such  is  the  difference  between  book- 
knowledge  and  ideas  practically  appropriated  and 
assimilated  by  the  mind,  and  such  was  the  glamour 
attending  the  word  "  America ;  "  in  the  early  years 
of  this  century,  the  geographical  confusion  of  ideas 
respecting  this  somewhat  extended  continent  is  in- 
credible. When  about  to  leave  Germany  on  my 
homeward  journey,  I  was  requested  by  a  learned 
professor  to  make  inquiry  concerning  his  wife's 
brother  who  had  emigrated  to  America:  when  last 
heard  from,  he  was  in  Surinam. 

My  schoolmates  gathered  around  the  little  stranger. 
They  made  much  of  me.  The  hazing  usually  prac- 
tised on  new-comers  was  forborne,  instead  of  which, 
with  true  German  Wissbegier,  they  assailed  me  with 
questions  about  tropical  plants  and  tropical  animals, 
as  if  all  America  lay  in  the  torrid  zone. 

The  staff  of  instructors  consisted  of  the  director, 
the  rector,  the  conrector,  three  collaborators,  and  a 
French  teacher  of  his  own  language,  who  resided  in 


THK   SCHOOL   DISCIPLINE. 

the  /'     '     .      The    I  Erector   Brobm    s\  iglish 

with  ease,  and  was  more  inclined  to  grant  my  requests 
if]  ;  him  in  that  I 

The  official  ii  >n  pupils  and  I 

outside  of  the  lecture-room  I  communion,  was 

conducted    in    Latin.      For    example,   if  a    Btudent 
wished   to   be  I    from   attendance  on  th< 

3  of  the  day,  be  aegrotiri  ailed  it;  that 

is,  he  pleaded  illness,  —  it  might  be  real  or  it  might 

Lammed,    -and  on   that  ground   wrote   a  letter 

addressed  to  all  the  teach  circulated  among 

them  by  our  \  ,  on  this  ■ 

Yiri  honoratissimi ! 
It    milii  aegrotanti  (or  <>l»  capil  purgandi 

CSUSa)  bodic  a  lectioiiilui.s  votris  ;ibe>se  li.-.-at   r«»^o  |H«to.juc. 

rub  at. 

]*>ut  this  privilege   bad  its  pri  I 

must  not  leave  tfa  do  dinner 

but  a  plal  ip  and  a  piece  of  dry  bread,     [fhe 

really  ill,  what  needed  he  more  '.'    it  he  shammed, 
let  him  I  consequences,  which  t"<>r  a  healthy 

boy  with   good  appetite  and  love  of  museul.r 

might  be  supposed  to  oounterbalan< 
of  idleni 

In    like   manner,  sen-  punishment  adj  : 

bya  teacher  was  given  in  Latin.    Of  punishment  there 

three  grades, —  Ccurem,  loss  of  dinner,  Kl 

Letention  within  doors,  an 
ration.    Accordingly,  the  sentence  would  read  :  Schulz 
or  Kurz  ob  negligeutiam^  or  ob  contumaciam^  or,  if  the 
Latin  for  any  particular  offence  did  not  come  readily 
to  mind,  <>b  causas  sibi  cognitas,  hodie  />r<r/)>/io  <• 
or  per  triduurn  nr  eoenobio  >s<>it,  i  ■  n>nn 


68  FREDERIC   HENRY   HEDGE. 

subeat.  The  career,  or  prison,  was  a  room  in  the  attic 
in  which  the  student  was  locked  up  for  one  or  two 
days,  with  tasks  sufficient  to  occupy  the  solitary  hours 
and  prevent  the  morbid  action  of  the  mind. 

The  discipline,  if  superficially  strict,  was  not 
searching  and  not  quickening.  Our  rooms  were 
visited  several  times  each  day,  always  twice  in  the 
evening,  — once  at  nine,  when  the  teacher  whose  turn 
it  was  came  to  our  desks  to  see  what  we  were  doing, 
and  again  at  eleven  to  see  that  we  were  in  bed.  On 
Sundays  we  were  marshalled  into  church ;  but,  once 
there,  devout  attention  to  the  service,  if  expected, 
was  certainly  not  enforced.  A  teacher  in  the  op- 
posite side  of  the  transept  was  supposed  to  be 
watching  us  ;  but  the  inspection  did  not  prevent  our 
conversing  freely  or  amusing  ourselves  with  a  novel, 
except  in  winter,  when  the  bitter  cold  kept  us  in  a 
state  of  torpor  amounting  almost  to  suspended  ani- 
mation. Such  cold  within  doors  I  had  never  before 
experienced,  and  have  never  experienced  since. 

The  gymnasium  supplied  us  with  two  meals  daily, 
one  at  noon  and  one  at  six  p.  m.  We  sat  at  long  tables, 
each  table  presided  over  by  one  of  the  teachers.  We 
were  well  served,  and  had  no  reason  to  complain  of 
our  fare,  although  complaints  were  not  wanting.  At 
the  upper  table  one  of  the  Primaner  read  aloud  ac- 
cording to  monastic  tradition.  But  the  books  selected 
for  that  use  were  not  works  of  monkish  or  any  other 
theology:  they  were  not  chosen  with  a  view  to  edifi- 
cation, but  for  entertainment  solely,  mostly  works  of 
fiction. 

Our  breakfasts  we  had  to  provide  for  ourselves  out 
of  our  weekly  pocket-money.  Each  student  furnished 
himself  with  an  apparatus  for  cooking  with  charcoal, 


SCHOOL   DELIGH 

and  with  Buch  table  furniture  as  he  could  afford. 
cooking  was  a  pleasant  occupation;  but  the  washing 
of  the 

rously  discharged.     Only  when  a  cup  became  - 
crusted  at 

found    necessary   to    cleanse   Li    I 
Borne  of  the  boys  became  adepts  Id  brewing 
chocolate,  and  invited  othi  I  their  proficiency 

in  that  useful  art      \   I  colate 

•  was  a  anient,  to  which  of   ;i 

Sunday    afternoon    the    knowing    would    ask    their 
friends. 

Ii'  the  discipline  was  in  some  i 
variously  relieved.    Sometimes  we  were  taken  on  a 
walk  to  the  nean  ibout  five  uw. 

play  or  an  elephant     One  of  our  t  aula 

fancy  for  pyrotechnics,  and  gave  as  an  occasional  en- 
tertainment in  that  kind.       1 

dents  were  allowed  to   gii  I,  to  which  ladies 

within  a  circuit  of  ten  miles  were  invited!  but  none  of 
tin-  other  Bex,  the   youths   themselves  officiatii 
partners.     The  dancing  lasted  all  night,  relieve 
intervals  by  drinking  of  bishop1  said  other  refection, 
which  caused  a  good  deal  of  aegrotiren  on  the  follow- 
ing day.     [ndeed,  if  I  remember  rightly,  the 

coeding  the  hall  u  d  a  holiday. 

A  marked  peculiarity  of  this  gymnasium  wai 
organization  of  the  students  .  inde- 

pendent of  the  teachers,  and  suppoet   I  unknown 

to  them.     Boys  who  had  reached  the  age  ni  sixl 

and  who  had  spent  a  year  and  a  half  at   the  school, 
constituted   a    senate  called   the    ■•  Y 

exercised  an  absolute  and  ondispul  ■  over  tho 

1  A  weak  concoction  of  spiritaooa  liquors. 


70  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

younger  portion.  There  was  a  written  code  of  laws, 
to  which  each  new-comer  was  required  to  sign  his 
allegiance.  He  then  received  his  cloister  name,  con- 
ferred by  the  veterans,  —  a  sobriquet  suggested  by 
some  personal  peculiarity,  to  which  he  must  respond 
when  called  by  a  senior,  though  not  allowed  in  return 
to  address  a  senior  of  a  year's  standing  by  the  cloister 
name  which  that  senior  bore  among  his  peers. 

The  code  contained  provisions  for  the  protection  of 
the  weak  against  the  oppression  of  his  stronger  mates. 
If  a  boy  was  bullied  by  another  for  whom  he  was 
physically  no  match,  he  had  only  to  say  to  his  perse- 
cutor, Ich  chasse  Sie,  "  I  bid  you  leave  me,"  and  the 
intercourse  between  the  two  was  stopped  at  once. 
For  if,  after  that  magic  formula  had  been  pronounced, 
the  bully  should  continue  his  persecution,  an  appeal  to 
the  veterans  would  subject  him  to  a  sound  thrashing. 
The  non-intercourse  between  the  two  was  usually  of 
short  duration,  but  could  only  be  terminated  by  an 
offer  of  reconciliation  by  the  chasse?*,  who  would  say 
to  the  chassed,  Soil  es  ivieder  gut  sein  ?  "  Shall  we 
be  friends  again  ?  "  If  a  student  had  been  guilty  of 
meanness,  such,  for  example,  as  cheating  at  play  or 
informing  against  a  fellow-student,  the  veterans  in 
council  decreed  that  he  be  sent  to  Coventry,  or,  as  the 
phrase  now  is,  "boycotted/'  for  a  definite  term.  Who- 
ever should  speak  to  him  during  that  period  would  be 
visited  with  the  same  penalty. 

Boys  under  the  age  of  twelve  in  Germany  address 
each  other  with  the  second  person  singular,  du;  but  the 
gymnasium  brings  a  transition  to  adult  speech.  The 
gymnasiast  is  addressed  and  addresses  his  mates  with 
the  customary  third  person  plural,  Sie  ;  but  if  two  of 
these   youngsters  are  smitten  with  a  mutual   liking, 


SCHOOL    tNSTRUCTION.  71 

tlioy  agree  to  use  the  more  familiar  second  j 
singular:    Sollen  wir  uns  du  n  I 

•  that  such   treaties  of  amity  were  m 
formed  when  wine  was  circulating.      But  they  sur- 
vived the  festive  hour. 

A  an  evidence  of  the  democratic  spirit  which  pre- 
vails in  academic  life,  I  may  mention  that,  though 
many  of  the  boys  in  this  Bchool  w<  of  noble- 

men, and  some  of  them  of  the  highesl  rank,  no  dis- 
crimination was  made  by  pupil  <>r  teacher  in  fav< 
these  high-born  youths. 

[f   the  discipline,  as    I    have   said,  was  nol    qui 

neither   was   the    instruction    fructifying.      For 
oung,  it   partook  too  much  of  the  univi 
method  of  teaching  by  lecturt    .     T<   i  little  pn 
tion  was  required  of  the  pupiL     Many  of  these,  it  is 
true,  took  ootes  of  the  lectures  with  all  the  assiduity 
so  caustically  recommended  by  Mephisl  when 

he  personates   l     i  I    in  the  play;  but  they  wen 
examined  on  their  notes,  and  the  question  of  promo- 
tion to  a  higher  class  or  detention   in  a  lower  was 
determined  by  no  very  rigorou  •  11',  I 

seem  on  looking  hack  to  have  mad.-  hut  little  pr< 
while  there,  except  in  writing    Latin,  ti. 

that  was  rigorously  enforced. 

Alter   nearly  two  pent    in  this  school,  I    was 

transferred    to    Sohulpfoite.       And    what     a    change! 
Bchulpforte  was  then,  as  it  is  still,  a  Prussian  ii 
tion,  and  manifested   in  its  discipline,  its   vitality,  its 
thoroughness,  the   care  of  the   best   government  of 

modern   time.      It  wa^>  a  pel    of  that    government,  and 

was  often  visited  by  the  minister  of  instruction  in 
person.  It  lies  on  the  Saale,  about  thirty  miles  from 
Leipsic  and  sixteen   from   Weimar.      It  constitutes  a 


72  FREDERIC   HENRY   HEDGE. 

community  by  itself,  independent  of  any  municipal 
control.  The  main  building,  or  collection  of  attached 
buildings ,  including  a  church,  like  the  other  school 
had  once  been  a  monastery.  Other  detached  edifices, 
among  them  the  house  of  Amtmann,  or  purveyor,  had 
sprung  up  around  the  central  mass.  An  extensive 
playground,  with  bowling-alleys  and  gymnastic  ap- 
paratus, formed  part  of  the  establishment.  The 
whole  was  enclosed  with  a  wall  of  a  mile  or  more  in 
circumference.  This  wall  no  one  of  the  alumni 
proper  was  without  special  permission  allowed  to 
pass. 

The  term  alumni  proper  requires  explanation.  For 
Prussian  citizens,  Schulpforte  was  a  free  school.  A 
limited  number  of  Prussian  youth  were  educated  at 
the  cost  of  the  government.  These  were  the  alumni 
proper.  They  had  no  single  rooms,  but,  when  not  in 
the  class-rooms,  were  distributed  through  several 
spacious  apartments,  presided  over  by  a  senior  who 
superintended  their  studies  and  gave  them  special  in- 
struction in  addition  to  their  class-work.  At  night 
they  were  lodged  in  large  dormitories. 

But,  in  addition  to  the  Prussian  alumni,  the  school 
was  open  to  boys  from  other  States,  either  German  or 
foreigners,  who  were  called  Kostganger  (boarders). 
They  were  domesticated  with  the  professors,  and  had 
rooms  of  their  own  or  shared  by  a  single  chum,  and 
paid  for  board  and  tuition.  I  had  the  good  fortune  to 
be  boarded  by  Dr.  Koberstein,  who  has  written  the 
most  complete  history  of  German  literature.  My 
chum  was  young  Baron  von  Muuchhausen,  nephew  of 
the  veritable  but  unveracious  story-teller  of  that 
name. 

The  staff  of  instructors  consisted  of  a  rector,  a  con- 


BCHULPFOBTE. 

r,  five  professors,  and  four  adjuncti,  or  tut 
a  considerably  Larger  number  of  teachers  than  Harvard 
could  boast  in   in;  To 

added  the  pastor,  the  physician,  the  Kapellmeister,  or 
director  of  mu8ic,  a  drawing-master,  a  dancing-m 
and  in  sammei  a  swimmipg-master. 

The  course  of  study,  though  moi  pur- 

sued, was  much  tie-  same  as  In 'other  gymnasia;  but 
special  attention  was  given  to  Greek  composition  ami 
to  Latin  ■-•  rses.  \  an  illustration  of  the  former,  I 
may    mention   thai         Pfortm  r  ti  G 

Iphigenie  into  I  >f  which  translation  a  copy  was 

nted  i"  the  poet  by  a  commit  I 

upon   him. 

The  making  of  Latin  lire- 

ments  of  the  semi-annual  examination.     The  m 
poetica  was  dictated  in  portions  adjusted  to  the  rank 
of  each  class.     A   Primaner  had,  I  think,  a  hundred 
hexameters  to  exhibit.     The  one  who  accomplished 
this  Pensum  first  Bignalized  his  triumph  by  ringing 

the    great    hell.      This    was    done    twice    while    I    was 

there  by  Wilhelm   Etanke,  brother  of  the  historian, 

who  was  also  a  graduate  of  Schulpforte, 

Saving  gone  SO    tar.  the   tired   hand  Stopped,   ami 

refused  t<>  take  up  the  task  again  :  once  more  it  was 
holden  "by  a  sort  of  tat-.  II  commissioned  me 
to  do  what  I  would  with  it.  and  even  dictated  a  few 
sentences  as  a  sort  ofsequeL  Tim  substance  of  them 
was  that  at  Schulpforte  his  mind  opened  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  what  is  meant  by  a  life  of  thought  and 
letters;  and,  above  all,  that  "  here  I  came  to  know 
Goethe."  But  an  anecdote  or  two  may  Berve  to 
piece  out  the  too  fragmentary  sketch.     Tim-  it   is 


74  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

odd  in  this  day  to  hear  of  his  long  walk  in  the 
country  with  his  tutor,  who  would  keep  up  his 
pupil's  spirits  by  a  glass  of  undiluted  gin ;  and  the 
tales  are  wonderful  of  the  aptness  of  the  more 
advanced  students  in  their  exercises  of  Latin  verse  ; 
and  he  showed  me  once,  in  the  "  album "  of  those 
days  (a  portfolio  of  very  modest  engravings),  the 
autograph  of  his  school-friend  and  chum,  Carl  von 
Munchhausen,  nephew  and  heir  of  that  veracious 
traveller,  the  far-celebrated  baron.  Munchhausen 
was  the  better  mathematician,  and  Hedge  the  better 
linguist,  so  that  they  were  often  helpful  to  each 
other  in  their  school  tasks ;  and  it  happened 
once  that  when  the  former  was  to  be  "confirmed" 
by  the  Lutheran  rite,  and  was  much  put  to  it  how 
to  wTord  his  indispensable  confession  in  Latin,  the 
draft  was  truthfully  and  skilfully  composed  for  him 
by  his  friend.  Truly,  one  might  say,  a  school-boy 
has  not  lived  in  vain,  to  whose  lot  it  has  fallen  to 
write  "  the  confessions  of  Baron  Munchhausen  "  !  A 
more  serious  event  in  this  friendship  befell,  when  the 
two  agreed  together  to  swim  a  somewhat  powerful 
river.  The  Saxon  boy  was  the  sturdier,  and  came 
safely  across,  when  turning  he  saw  his  companion  the 
American  gasping  helpless  in  the  stream,  and  just 
about  to  drown :  he  succeeded  in  dragging  him 
out,  quite  unconscious  ;  and,  ignorant  what  to  do, 
stretched  him  on  the  warm  sand,  where  that  and 
the  sun's  rays  presently  brought  him  back  to  life. 

Ee turning  to  America  at  the  end  of  1822,  he  was 
first  beguiled  into  a  tedious  boat-passage  down  the 
Elbe ;  then  long  kept  in  port  by  the  sickness  of  the 


AT    IIAKV Alii)    COLLI 

ii  of  the  ] r  little  ship  ;  then,  when  the 

tain  had  died  in  Hamburg,  to  put  t 

with  an  incompetent  mate  for  command 

a  Ion"  and   terrible   winter  voyage  t<»  New   Xork. 

II..  nut   c.»!,  ■ 

an»l  remembered  most  distinctly  the  mine 

when  they  were  becalmed  in  the  Gulf  Stream  and 

reduced   t<>  a   pint   a  day,  and   his   effort  t<> 
wash  in  water  baled  from  the  sea,  which 

me  and  horrible  t"  be  touched,  -  this,  with 
tin-  overland  journey  borne,  when  he  had  to  trudge 
age-coach  through  the  blocking  snow- 
drifts of  Worcester  County.  Little  hints  like  these 
help  till  out  the  picture  "t"  tin-  cheery,  sturdy,  valiant 
Lad  of  seventeen, fighting  his  way  through  Buch  cold 
welcome  t<>  the  home  where  his  academic  honors 

were   to  ht'   W  "]|. 

The  date  of  his  graduation  ;it  Harvard  College,  in 

ilass  of  Charles    Francis   Adams   and   Horatio 

Greenough,  in   1825,  very  nearly  touches  the  high- 

•  mark  <»t"  that  wave  of  intellectual  enthu 
which    for   tii-  'Tati<»n    ulenl iti<*d   the 

college  with  the  beet  life  of  New  England  more 
closely  than,  probably,  it  has  ever  been  befoi 
since.  The  rise  of  that  wave  was  first  made  plainly 
visible  in  the  installation  "t*  President  Kirkland 
in  1810;  its  flow  included  the  colli 
1  it.  Frothingham,  Walker,  Bancroft,  and  Em- 
erson; it^  shining  crest  was  when,  in  1  124,  Ed- 
ward Everett,  in  his  Phi  Bets  Kappa  oration,  paid 
eloquent  homage  t-»  Lafayette  a-  the  Lrnr-t  of  tin4 
nation  and  a  hero  of  two  world-,  — a  moment  which 


76  FREDERIC   HENRY   HEDGE. 

is  still  looked  back  to,  by  living  witnesses,  as  the 
most  splendid  in  that  period  of  their  young  pride 
and  hope.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  character  of 
this  mental  epoch  was  almost  purely  literary,  rhetor- 
ical, or  philosophic :  of  those  just  named,  President 
Walker  was  the  only  one  who  gave  his  mind  seri- 
ously to  study  the  scientific  method  in  its  effect  on 
the  intellectual  life ;  and  he  was  by  profession  a 
theologian  and  moralist,  not  himself  a  man  of  scien- 
tific method  as  a  thinker.  All  the  best  intellectual 
work  of  the  period  was  shaped  and  toned  by  the 
exigencies  of  popular  speech,  rather  than  the  severer 
logic  of  the  Schools.  Even  grave  chapters  of  his- 
tory, theology,  or  metaphysics,  in  such  hands,  be- 
came a  series  of  eloquent  addresses  rather  than 
steps  in  a  methodical  essay.  Even  the  severely 
disciplined  mind  of  such  a  scholar  as  Dr.  Hedge 
was  at  its  best  in  the  four  or  five  noble  orations 
which  mark  the  culminating  moments  of  his  career; 
and  his  first  public  appearance  in  the  field  was  as 
the  poet  of  his  class  on  Commencement  Day. 

After  passing  through  the  regular  course  of  the- 
ological study,  he  was  settled  as  minister  of  West 
Cambridge  (now  Arlington)  in  1829.  Here,  in  his 
six  years'  ministry,  he  developed  by  resolute  disci- 
pline the  mental  habit  that  remained  with  him 
through  life.  A  sturdy  build,  and  a  fibre  tenacious 
rather  than  supple,  marked  the  character  of  both 
mind  and  body.  Alert  and  no  way  sluggish  (that 
vice  of  scholars),  he  was  a  vigorous  pedestrian  till 
near  the  end  of  his  days,  and  the  strains  of  endur- 
ance he  underwent  in  his  various  travelling  experi- 


His   LITBRABY   HABIT.  ,7 

U  a  man  of  letters 
in   these  days.     But    the  daily    1;  that    <■{'  a 

laborious  student,  —  which  means  that  he  w 
pable  oi  the  physi  in  o!  an  amount  <»f  confine- 

ment t<>  books  which  few  meu  are  equal  to.     Ami 

it    iii''. hi-    l'M»,    in    his    case  :  v    unusual    strain 

of  laborious  and   painstaking  literary  composition. 
Tip-  amount  of  mechanical  labor  in   preparhi 
the"  pulpit  wa  ter  then  than  now;  and,  while 

exceptionally  faithful  in  this  task-work,  he   ■ 
always  Blowly  ami  with  effort     Quite  in 
with  the  Bwifi  and  brilliant  movement  of  hi-  emi- 
contemporary  and  friend,  Dr.  Hartineau,  who 
made  himself  master  of  shorthand,  that 
his  pen  might  keep  pace  with  the  electric  rapidity  of 
his  thought,  every  sentence,  every  Line,  was  traced 
with  deliberation,  —  nay,  revised  and  interlined  with 
scrupulous  care.    There  was  none  of  the  labor-saving 
that  comes  with  the  modern  way  of  dictating  t<>  an 
amanuensis  or  type-writer,  none  "f  the  slovenly  pen- 
manship which  is  said  sometimes  t<>  !"■  tic  cruel 
tation  of  men  of  letters.     In  the  hundi  pages 

of  his  manuscript  that   I  have  read,  formal 
familiai-  epistle,  I  do  not   remember  ever  hesitating 
at   a  Bingle  illegible  word  "i-  [y  written  let- 

ter: th.'  pages  of  tic  autobiographic  fragment  just 
given  arc  as  scrupulously  penned  as  a  school 
composition;  no  trembling  <>!'  the  hand,  even,  is 
discernible,  though  written  far  past  eighty,  in  the 
lassitude  ami  drea  I  of  threatening  infirmity.  This 
firmness  "t'  fibre,  this  resolute  temper,  i-  strongly 
characteristic  l>"th  of  the  scholar  and  tin-  man. 


78  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

As  a  set-off  to  this  laborious  habit  of  mind,  lie 
had  the  rare  gift  —  which  we  have  never  known  in 
equal  degree  except  in  the  case  of  Edward  Everett  — 
of  mastering  with  verbal  accuracy,  by  a  single  read- 
ing, the  form  and  phrase  of  a  lung  elaborate  dis- 
course. The  advantage  this  gave  him  on  the  public 
platform,  on  formal  occasions,  has  been  often  felt ; 
and  all  the  more,  because  (as  we  may  recall  of  the 
eulogy  on  Bellows  and  Emerson  2)  it  was  attended 
with  so  easy  a  mastery  of  matter  as  well  as  form 
that  his  mind  played  freely,  in  variation  of  the 
theme,  as  the  point,  the  phrase,  or  the  illustration 
might  suggest  itself  at  the  moment,  I  have  never 
understood  why  he  did  not  avail  himself  of  this 
remarkable  power  in  the  ordinary  exercises  of  the 
pulpit :  possibly  it  involved  a  grasp  and  a  strain 
that  he  did  not  care  to  put  forth  too  often.  But 
among  the  very  last  of  his  public  utterances  there 
were  two  occasions  —  in  Providence  and  in  Phila- 
delphia —  when,  distrusting  his  eyesight  for  the 
evening  service,  after  speaking  in  the  usual  way  in 
the  morning,  he  secured  by  that  forthputting  of 
memory  the  freedom  of  speech  he  craved. 

These  habits  of  thought  and  speech,  along  with 
the  gathering  of  great  treasures  of  book-lore,  we  may 
suppose  to  have  been  the  attainment  of  those  six 
years  of  his  first  pastoral  charge.  At  the  age  of 
thirty,  with  powers  ripened  to  self-reliance,  and  with 
rare  wealth  of  intellectual  resource,  he  became  min- 
ister of  the  Independent  Congregational  Church  in 

1  These  are  given,  with  the  author's  revision,  as  an  Appendix  to 
"  Our  Liberal  Movement." 


BAHOOR.  —  visits    TO    KUBOPE. 

B        >r,  Maine,  then   a  p]  mote  and  hard  to 

.'  but   lull  of  the.  intelligence,  the  enterprise, 
in  a  brilliant  future,  which  we 
be  n  more  accustomed  since  to  with 

rowth  of  om  W  stern  The  fifteen 

spent  here  not  on!  I  t<»  develop  big  po* 

a  more  vigorous  independence  <>f  thought  and  will 
than  they  might,  possibly,  have  grown  to  in  an  older 
community,  hut  were  tin'  ]"-ii<».l  when  the  position 
he  has  bo  long  held  before  the  public  was  firmly 
taken  ami  broadly recognL  Lmongwarm  friends 

and  '  rnera  in  the  circle  of  his  local  ministry 

there  was  an  ease  and  joy  in  t:  ion  of  his  own 

ripening  thought  ;  while  the  special  contribution  he 
could  bring,  from  the  intimate  home  knowledge  he 
had  "t'  < '  Tiium,  made  his  moat  char  and 

valuable  gift  to  the  larger  movement  of  thought 
that  illuminated  those  days.  The  first  of  three  later 
visits  t'>  Europe  for  the  pu  I  study  and  travel, 

and  of  by  far  the  deepest  influence  in  Bhaping  his 
riper  thought,  was  in  the  year  1847.  Spending  the 
ensuing  winter  m  Rome,  he  not  only  became  an 
appreciative  Btudent  "t"  Italian  art,  thus  enriching 
his  culture  by  a  vein  which  iik »<t  of  us  are  obliged 
t<»  neglect,  but  was  a  witness  t<»  some  of  the  most 
striking  scenes  of  that  strange  revolutionary  spring- 
time of  is  is,  including  the  moment  of  the  passiou- 

1  A  parishioner  «>f  his.  wIi.mh  I  knew  afterwards,  wai 
ealmed  f<>r  a  week  off  the  headland  <>f  Penol  i  the  return 

from  Boston  ;  ami  tlm  overland  journey  in  winter  had  its 
full  share  ««f  arctic  hardships  ami  perils :  he  has  told  me  <>f  toiling 
through  half  the  night  to  help  right  th<   -  ten  when  apt 

keep  it  from  being  blockaded  in  the  mow-drifts. 


80  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

'ate  protest  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  against  the  demands  of 
the  revolutionists  :  Non  xoglio,  non  debbo,  non  posso  ! 
—  words  which  he  was  fond  of  quoting  as  he  had 
heard  them  from  those  sonorous  lips.  The  delight 
of  that  one  deep  draught  of  the  intellectual  life  of 
Italy,  and  then  of  moving  with  the  ease  of  native 
speech  in  the  scholarly  circles  of  revisited  Germany, 
made  one  of  the  treasures  of  a  memory  ever  fresh, 
during  the  years  that  followed. 

With  his  rare  intellectual  gifts  and  great  wealth 
of  literary  culture,  there  was  no  one  farther  than  he 
from  the  dilettante  spirit  which  cherishes  literature 
or  art  for  its  own  sake,  apart  from  its  higher  uses. 
It  was  his  fixed  habit  of  mind  to  regard  those  things 
not  merely  as  good  and  beautiful  in  themselves,  but 
as  instruments  of  service.  It  was  highly  character- 
istic of  this  temper  of  mind  that  he  disdained  the 
clamor,  and  wholly  dissented  from  the  argument, 
that  demanded  international  copyright  on  the  ground 
of  property-right,  holding  in  scorn  whatever  seemed 
to  turn  into  a  trade  the  high  vocation  of  authorship. 
The  temper  was  that  of  the  teacher,  the  preacher, 
the  interpreter  of  thought  or  beauty  to  the  higher 
life  of  men.  This  vocation  was  very  early  rec- 
ognized in  him,  and  it  was  rewarded  in  his  long 
career  with  every  honor  which  service  like  his  can 
win.  Yet,  in  the  simplicity  of  his  judgment  of  him- 
self, he  always  doubted  whether  he  ought  not  to 
have  followed  his  first  inclination  to  a  physician's 
life ;  and  always  regretted  that  he  was  born  too 
early  (as  he  thought)  to  be  baptized  into  the  newer 
life  of  Science,  instead  of  that  almost  purely  literary 


MENTAL   TEMPEB   AND    BESOUJ  81 

and  philosophic  training,  in  which  moat  person 
the,  noblest  field  for  tl 

While  he   was  born  to   the  birthrig  full 

enjoyment  of  companionship  in  the  most  brilliant 
intelli  ra  of  New  England,  he  brought  t<>  ii  a 

gift  of  bia  own,  which  no  other  man  either  <li<l  <>r 
could,  —  the  gift  (as  we  might  almost  term  it  j  of  two 
mother-tongues,  English  and  German  being  about 
equally  familiar  to  him  from  his  Bchool-day&  h 
was  not  alone  the  Literary  kno  1 1  srman,  in 

which  many  Bcholara  may  have  rivalled  him;  but 
he  Learned  the  tongue  as  a  boy  amongst  boys,  when 
the  greal  i  German  Literature  was  -till  Bhining 

in  it-  mellow  afternoon,  while  t  loethe,  w 

-till  the  object  of  that  revering 
homage  which  is  never,  perhaps,  bo  Loyally  felt  as 
by  young  disciples  to  a  li\im_r  M  ter;  bo  that  not 
only  he  was  quick  in  Later  years  I  I  any  dis- 

paragement of  that  hero  of  his  boyish  imagination, 
but  in  him  and  in  other  masters  could  trace  the 
touches  of  home-feeling,  and  even  here  and  there 
the  reminiscei]  jhool-boy  slang,  in  the  d 

that    makes  up  the   marvellous   com]  I   the 

Goethean   verse   and   pr<  Thia  ■    of 

German  thought  rather  than  its  form  and  under- 
standing merely,  he  had  brought  home  with  him 
just  at  a  time  when  it  not  only  quickened  and 
enlarged  his  own  university  studies,  but  could  be 

turned   to   later   BCCOUnt,  to    make    flexible   and  rich 

the   Bomewhat    provincial    dialect   of  and 

scholarship  thru  prevailing  in  New  England.    This, 

rather  than   any  formal  teaching  of   philosophy, — 

6 


82  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

which  he  disbelieved  in  and  kept  aloof  from, — 
made  his  characteristic  service  to  our  so-called 
"  Transcendental "  movement. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  social  as  well  as  intellectual 
delight  he  ever  enjoyed  was  in  the  companionship 
of  that  golden  age  (as  we  are  tempted  to  call  it  now) 
when  the  glory  and  the  dew  of  youth  still  lay  upon 
many  fields  of  thought  which  we  have  since  had  to 
survey  with  measuring-rods  and  to  take  account  of 
in  critical  judgment  and  comparison.  And  those 
companionships  were  perhaps  always  the  closest  and 
most  familiar  to  his  thought.  None  others  have 
ever  quite  taken  the  place  to  him  of  the  names  of 
Emerson,  Furness,  and  Margaret  Fuller.  It  may  he 
that  some,  even  among  his  own  students,  have  since 
those  days  found  or  imagined  him  difficult  of  ap- 
proach and  slow  of  sympathy ;  and  he  might  find  it 
hard  to  pardon  an  affront  once  given  to  his  good 
taste,  his  self-respect,  or  his  jealous  regard  for  a 
friend.  So  that  it  has  been  often  a  surprise  to  find 
how  generous,  considerate,  tender,  even  humble- 
minded  this  strong  man  could  be  when  the  magic 
circle  was  once  passed,  or  when  his  thought  came 
up  for  judgment  and  comparison  in  debate  as  be- 
tween equals.  The  writer  of  these  lines  has  been 
personally  indebted  to  that  generous  consideration 
in  many  ways  that  do  not  concern  the  public,  and 
has  come  to  know  instances  of  his  bounty  in  giving, 
and  thoughtful  loving-kindness,  which  for  mere 
justice'  sake,  and  in  memory  of  a  friend,  and  for  the 
better  understanding  of  those  who  did  not  see  that 
side,  justify  this  brief  mention  here. 


THE   GIFT   01   MEMORY. 

It   may   1"'   mentioned    here   thai    the    Bingular 
vigor  and   tenacity  of   memory,  before    spoken    of, 
embraced  first  and  naturally  those  masses  of  liter- 
bask-work  which  made  hi  icuons  public 

performance;    but   took    in   with   equal   ease   long 
from   classic   writers,  —  particularly  from 
the  poets,  both  German   and    English,  who   made 
his  favorite   companions,  —  and   served  a 
ln-lp  in   the  omposition  as  well     For  ex- 

ample,  the    lines    entitled    "  The    [d<  first 

published  I  the   longest 

and  most  striking  of  bis  ] ms  and  among  I 

be    regarded    as   the   besl ,  were  ested    to    liis 

thought  while  watcliing  the  stars  daring  a  Bleep- 
aight    in    the    Bangor   mail-coach,  and   were 
wholly  elaborated  in  memory,  to  be  written  down 
on  his  arrival  at  home     *  >*  1 1 « •  i -  of  hi  were 

composed  in  a  similar  way.  Whatever  was  metri- 
cal in  form,  he  -aid,  was  taken  easily  into  his  mem- 
ory and  Btayed  thei  ►.  For  <  :■  ferring  quite 
incidentally  to  the  early  promise  and  the  early  loss 
of  Edward  Emerson,  the  most  brilliantly  gifted  of 
the  three  brothers,  he  quoted  at  once  for  illi 
tion  the  pathetic  Btanzas  in  which  thi  I  enius 
farewell  to  his  native  land  from  the  ship  that 
bore  him  out  of  Boston  Harbor  upon  the  voyage 
from  which  he  never  returned.  NTor  were  these 
as  one  might  expect,  only  the  familiar  handling 
of  long-kept  hoards;  for  once,  when  I  epok 
those  verses  of  Matthew  Arnold  ("Obermann  once 
more")  which  tell  bo  powerfully  the  tragedy  and 
pathos  of  that  desolation  of  Bpirit  in  ancient  Borne 


84  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

which  bowed  her  proud  head  to  the  yoke  of  Orien- 
tal faith,  he  began,  in  that  deep  and  mellow  tone 
of  recitation  which  his  friends  will  recall  so  well, 
and  without  hesitation  repeated  perhaps  a  dozen 
of  those  wonderful  stanzas,  which  (I  think)  he  had 
read  only  once,  but  which  had  so  struck  and  clung 
upon  his  memory. 

One  other  quality  in  him  appears  to  have  been 
ripened  in  these  days :  it  belongs,  in  part,  to  that 
which  President  "Walker  had  in  mind  when  he 
spoke  to  me  of  him  once  as  "  the  only  man  we 
have  who  is  master  of  the  grand  style.1'  This 
phrase  might  possibly  mean  only  what  is  ornate 
and  orotund  in  rhetorical  composition ;  but  in  this 
case  it  meant  something  more.  I  was  first  dis- 
tinctly conscious  of  it  in  a  passage  of  the  "  Christian 
Examiner,"  about  1851,  speaking  of  the  effect  upon 
the  imagination  of  an  experience  at  sea ;  and  I 
have  since  thought  that  in  this  one  deep  resonant 
chord  there  was  a  tone  not  reached  by  any  other 
living  master  of  English  prose :  we  might  compare 
it  to  the  music  of  a  bell,  which  is  no  one  single 
note,  like  that  of  a  bugle,  but  is  made  up  of  the 
harmonies,  peal  within  peal,  which  respond  to  the 
intricate  curves,  of  varying  diameter,  that  make 
the  shape  and  vibrate  to  the  cadence  of  the  bell. 
A  few  passages  in  his  writings  —  in  no  writer  are 
there  more  than  a  very  few  —  will  justify  this 
comparison. 

The  mind  of  Dr.  Hedge  was  in  like  manner  sensi- 
tive to  what  we  may  call  the  resonances  with  which 
the  soul  or  the  imagination  responds  to  the   utter- 


His    [NTELLECTUAL   HABIT. 

ance  of  a  thought,  —  it  may  be  in  a  image, 

or  it  may  be  in   a    philosophic  truth.     He  would 

c  be  content  with  the  absti  m   of 

a  thing,  the  one  hard   formal    statement.     T<>   his 
mind  it  must  Bpeak  in  the  Language  of  literature 
rather  than   science.     And   this   had   a   mop 
reaching  effect  upon  the   Bubstance   and    i  I 

tin-  thought  itself  than  illicit  at  first  be  Bupj 
Thus,   f<>r   example,   he    -■  braordinarily   well 

read  in  the  literature  of  philosophy, — which  we 
may,  indeed,  qualify  by  Baying  that  it  was  mainly 
tin-  literature  anterior  to  the  last   thirty  or 

But   he  v.  remely  distrustful   of  tin* 

dogmatism   of    formal    metaphysics.      II-'   steadily 
and  with  increasing  emphasis  dis] 
matizing  of    Hegel  and  his  discipli  -.     He     -  con- 
stantly and   with   increasing  ••  his 
preference    to    Schelling,    whom               arded    as 
having  the  profounder  in- 
a   theorist.     What    we   might    -till    less   have 
pectedj  while  his  knowledge  of  <i  rman  was  that 

mother  tongue,  while  he  read  its  philosophic 
dialect  without  even  the  conscious  effort  which 
most  readers  need  to  assimilate  the  phrase  and 
the  thought,  it  was  not  his  habit  to  read  a  n 

cutively,  with  regard  to  the  logic  of  it-  struc- 
ture. 'Jims  he  had  never  read  through  : 
paratively  brief  and  compactly 
Kant's  "Critique,"  but  was  familiar  only  with  its 
speculations  on  Time  and  Space  and  with  its  criti- 
cism of  the  argument  for  a  speculative  Theism; 
while    he    might    show,    incidentally,   the    pie 


86  FREDERIC   HENRY   HEDGE. 

he  took  in  various  of  Kant's  minor  essays,  which 
are  never  heard  of  in  histories  of  philosophy.  Then, 
too,  it  was  the  poetic  and  speculative,  not  the  logical 
or  didactic,  side  of  natural  science  that  interested 
him ;  and  he  liked  it  best  when  in  some  shape  that 
allowed  one  to  treat  as  open  questions  its  most 
fundamental  theories,  —  even  the  theory  of  gravi- 
tation, or  the  structure  of  the  solar  system.  With 
much  insight  and  delight  in  speculative  philosophy, 
it  was  always  the  literary  study  of  it  that  delighted 
him  most. 

Again,  with  a  great  range  both  of  knowledge 
and  of  sympathy  in  the  field  of  history,  he  rather 
preferred  views  of  it  which  were  generalistic,  specu- 
lative, and  somewhat  vague.  Writers,  like  Gibbon, 
of  powerful  bias,  especially  such  as  express  their 
conception  in  literary  "  good  form "  and  in  "  the 
grand  style,"  attracted  him  more  than  those  more 
curiously  accurate  :  history,  like  philosophy,  was 
rather  literature  than  science.  Nor,  though  a 
scholar  of  admirable  equipment,  was  he  in  the 
modern  sense  a  trained  philologist:  his  interest  in 
philology  was  that  of  a  curious  amateur.  His 
lame  knowledge  and  facile  use  of  the  learned 
tongues,  especially  Latin,  did  not  lead  him,  in 
general,  to  deal  with  the  sources  of  our  historical 
knowledge  in  the  original  speech,  even  in  his 
chosen  and  professional  field  of  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory. The  thought,  the  doctrine,  the  persons  of 
the  great  and  eminent  men  who  make  the  actors 
in  that  field,  he  knew  well,  often  with  a  grasp  of 
imagination    and   memory  of   facts  that    made  his 


Ills    HISTORICAL    BTUDIE8. 

knowledge   of    them   singularly   vivid,   insti 
and  re  I      Particular  writers,  too,  he  knew  1 
critical   and    profound   apprehension    of   their 
works,     A.ugustini  Im,  and  ad   Lully 

maybe  mentioned  among  those  who  thus  atti 
him ;   and,  of  latex   *  9  and   Leibnitz, 

w1k.hi    lit-   had    studied   extensively  and    patiently 
in  their  own  text     But  the  great   web  of  1. 
is  wrought  of  the  lives  and  thought  multitude 

of  lesser  men,  who  Bhould  also  be  judged  by  touch 
of  tin-  hand  and  look  of  tip-  eye,  —  thai  i-.  by  their 
own  woid  for  what  they  thought  and  did;  and  <'f 
this  knowledge  he  took  less  account  1  do  nol 
think,  for  example,  thai  he  knew  I  I    then 

(unless  the  very  earliest)  .a  Becond   hand; 

and, excepting  Scotus  Erigena,  tin'  Latin  eccli 
tical  writers  of  the  "lower"  period  were  m 
unknown  t<»  him.  On  the  other  hand,  his  li' 
apprehension  of  the  great   cl  well 

Lain.  \\  .  discriminating,  and  fresh. 

One  who   i>  greatly  his   inferior  b  and 

wealth  of  the  knowledge  to  he  had  from  1 

as  there  Is  no  one  of  us  but   musl  9  himself 

to  he  —  will  take  such  indications  as  the  above  t<> 
show  not  the  extent  or  accuracy  or  value  of  that 
knowledge  in  him,  but  only  the  particular  lin< 
which  it  lav.     We  take  the  impression  of  a  I 
luminous,  and  richly  stored  intelligence;  we  stand 
towards  it  in  the  attitude  of  learners;  and  we  are 
aware  of  the  powerful  influence  thai  com.--  I 
from  that  mental  touch.     When,  further,  we  look- 
to  see  the   form  of   the  channel   through  which  it 


88  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

comes,  we  are  at  once  struck  by  noticing  how  much 
is  instruction  and  discipline,  how  little  is  mere 
didactics :  to  use  the  familiar  distinction,  how  little 
in  comparison  is  the  "  literature  of  knowledge,"  how 
much  the  "  literature  of  power."  Now  power  tells 
best  in  a  series  of  waves,  or  blows,  —  not  like  the 
tug  of  a  chain,  which  is  no  stronger  than  its  weak- 
est link.  Tt  will  be  found  that  the  delivery  of 
Dr.  Hedge's  argument  —  take,  for  example,  his  best- 
known  work,  "Beason  in  Eeligion"  —  was  in  a 
series  of  discourses,  each  rounded  and  complete  in 
itself,  which  developed  a  single  order  of  thought 
with  culminating  effect,  but  with  little  of  logical 
coherence.  There  was  a  felicity  of  phrase,  but  ab- 
solute injustice  of  thought,  in  the  criticism  which 
once  spoke  of  these  discourses  as  a  garland  of 
plucked  flowers  tied  together  with  a  string,  not  a 
living  plant  that  yields  them  by  vital  force :  the 
live  thought  connecting  them  runs  underground, 
like  the  root  of  "  Solomon's  seal,"  sending  up  its 
shoots  independent  of  one  another,  and  is  invisible 
to  those  who  do  not  look  below  the  surface.  But, 
it  may  be  contended,  the  argument  is  all  the  more 
readily  grasped,  and  so  all  the  more  effective,  be- 
cause delivered  in  this  form.  And  the  book  just 
named  has  doubtless  had  far  more  influence  in  our 
own  later  thinking  than  any  other  of  its  time  and 
class. 

Quite  in  keeping  with  the  mould  in  which  he 
thus  cast  his  argument,  Dr.  Hedge  felt  a  certain 
impatience  and  disdain  of  that  intellectual  method 
which  affects  logical  completeness,  and  tries  to  for- 


HIS   PHILOSOPHIC    METHOD. 

mulate  al]  modes  of  being  in  a  cob 
From  his  own  mind  ms  distinctly  to  have 

excluded  anything  that  could  be  called  a  theory 
of  the  univei    .     H  nded  ou  the 

one  hand  by  the  argument  for  Final  Causes,  which 
he  thought  to  have  been  effectually  discredited  in 
Kant's  "  Critique,"  and  by  modern  I  I  Evolu- 

tion, which  seemed  to  him  a  ba  itism, 

and  which  he  never  attempted  really  to  understand 
Probably  that  conception  of  the  an  >uld  have 

d  him  best  which  took  into  account  only  the 
order  of  [deas  exhibited  in  it  ;  and  it'  he  had 
mulated  it  at  all,  it  would  have  been  in  a  m< 
less  qualified  Berkleyanism.  What  was  m>t  in  the 
Divine  order  of  [deas  touched  neither  his  philoso- 
phy Dor  his  religion.  It*  he  tended  more  and  more, 
in  later  life,  to  a  way  of  thinking  thi  d  to 

regard  the  Eternal  God  i  (  I  material 

things,  and  set  up  an  illogical   Dualism 
our  traditional  Theism,  it  was,  I  think,  more  from  a 
moral  than  from  an  intellectual  moti  would 

not  make  the  Holy  <  me  responsible  for  the  woe 
wickedness   w<  he  would  at    1 

sanctuary  of  worship  for  the  soul,  undisturbed  by 
the  jarring  and  painful  argument  that  ever  Be<  ks 
and  ever  fails  to  reconcile  the  Ea<  ts  of  daily  life  with 
the  conception  the  mind  loves  to  frame  of  a  purely 
benevolent  Creator. 

And  it  may  be  held,  further,  that  his  mental  tem- 
perament —  poetic,  sensitive,  and  sympathetic  rather 
than  severely  logical  —  made  it  all  the  harder  to 
accept    the  optimism   which  consoles   the   av 


90  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

religious  mind.  He. would  admire  without  heartily 
accepting  the  clear  and  brilliant  argumentation  of 
that  masterpiece  of  forensic  divinity,  Martineau's 
"Study  of  Eeligion;"  and,  while  he  was  morally 
repelled,  he  was  intellectually  fascinated  —  more, 
perhaps,  than  he  would  readily  admit  to  himself  — 
by  Schopenhauer's  interpretation  of  the  more  som- 
bre facts  of  life.  At  any  rate,  he  kept  his  religion 
and  his  cosmology  quite  apart,  excepting  so  far  as 
he  might  indulge  in  speculation  or  poetic  meditation 
upon  the  latter.  In  the  constant  mood  of  his  in- 
ward life  he  was  a  reverent,  submissive,  and  humble 
worshipper  of  the  Living  God  ;  while  he  refused  to 
lift  with  daring  hand  the  veil  that  hides  the  mys- 
tery of  the  Eternal,  and  repudiated  the  pious  logic 
by  which  many  have  thought  to  bolster  up  their 
faith. 

Just  what  effect  this  habit  of  thought  had  on  his 
doctrinal  belief,  it  would  be  hard  and  not  quite 
safe  to  say.  In  his  own  expression  of  it  he  was 
true  to  the  Emersonian  maxim,  to  see  and  say  the 
one  thing,  honestly  and  plainly,  as  it  reveals  itself 
to  the  mind  in  its  best  moods,  and  let  the  matter 
of  logical  consistency  shift  for  itself.  Eeverent  and 
submissive  in  his  own  acceptance  of  the  discipline 
of  life,  and  asserting  with  whatever  fulness  of  mean- 
ing it  could  bear  to  him  the  sublime  and  comforting 
faith  of  the  soul's  eternal  life,  he  yet  has  given 
public   expression 1  to  an   exposition    of  that  faith 

1  See  "Atheism  in  Philosophy,"  p.  388,  and  the  essay  on  "Per- 
sonality" in  the  volume  entitled  "Luther  and  Other  Essays," 
pp.  288-288. 


HIS   BKLIGI0U8    FAITH.  91 

which  seems  to  deny  outright  the  survival  of  man's 
nal  consciousness  beyond  the  present  sphere. 
Thai  this  was  no  mere  phase  <»f  philosoph 
lation  he  Bhowed,  further,  by  his  repeated  assertion 
that  memory  and  consciousm  "functioi 

the  brain,*1  which  cannot  be  conceived  to  Burvive  its 
dissolution  ;  nay,  by  the  •  found  in  insist- 

ing upon  this  view  at  a  time  Buffering  and 

depression,  when  "to  drag  the  lengthening  chain 
of  memory  "  into  perpetual  duration  seemed  to  him 
ill-  most  dreadful  of  anticipations,  and  absolute 
repose  was  the  only  boon  he  craved.  To  which  it 
is  only  to  I"-  added  that  the  Eternal  Life  itself,  with 
whatever  it  may  imply  for  the  Berenity  and  support 
ot'  the  individual  bouI,  was  to  him  the  most  vivid 
tnd  that,  religiously  as  well  as  men- 
tally, he  walked  always  in  those  "ways  of  the 
Spirit "  which  it  was  ever  the  burden  weighing 
upon  his  thought  to  interpret  fitly  to  other  men. 

A    friend   who   was    privileged    to  be   much   in 
communication  with  him  in  his  1. 
follows :  — 

u  In  tlif  early  months  of  this  year  [1887]  he  was  for 

many  weeks  afflicted  with  a  most  depressing 

tons)  complaint,    as   to   which    I    have   often   thought 

since  that  its  torment  exceeded   many  times  over  that 

of  martyrdom  by  slow  tire,  as  in  th< 

indeed,  the  memory  of  it  is.  I   think,  to  be  traced  in 

the  tone  of  Borne  of  his  writings  since,  for  example  in 

the  article   on   -Nature,  a    Problem/  in  the    •  I  nita- 

rian    Review'  of   March,   lsvs.      During  this  time   of 

Buffering  his  frequent  and  almost   passionately 


92  FREDERIC    HENRY   HEDGE. 

pressed  wish  was  only  for  absolute  forgetfulness  and 
rest.  It  happened  once  that,  when  I  had  not  seen  him 
for  two  or  three  weeks,  he  sent  for  me  to  his  bedside, 
and  spoke  to  me  nearly  in  these  words  :  '  I  wished  to 
see  you  at  this  time.  When  I  recover  from  this  sick- 
ness, if  I  do  recover,  you  will  see  another  man,  and 
you  will  not  know  your  friend.  I  shall  have  lost  my 
memory ;  I  shall  be  afflicted  with  a  troublesome 
aphasia  ;  and  I  shall  not  be  able  to  say  what  I  wish 
to  say  now,'  —  going  on,  with  strong  assurance  of 
affection  and  of  gratitude  for  the  service  he  conceived 
me  to  have  rendered,  to  give  the  few  instructions 
which  I  was  to  observe.  I  assured  him  (as  I  very 
sincerely  could)  that  I  thought  his  fear  quite  ground- 
less :  I  had  watched  carefully,  and  had  observed  that 
(allowing  for  the  languor  due  to  his  malady)  his 
thought  was  always  precise  and  clear,  and  the  right 
word  was  always  chosen.  I  left  him,  I  think,  partly 
reassured ;  and  indeed,  as  soon  as  the  crisis  was  past, 
he  not  only  rallied  surprisingly  fast,  but  his  conversa- 
tion was  never  more  fluent  and  clear,  or  his  memory  of 
the  past  held  in  easier  grasp,  than  in  the  months  that 
followed." 

This  testimony,  it  is  true,  needs  to  be  qualified 
by  adding  that  something  —  not  much  —  of  the 
difficulty  he  dreaded  did  in  fact  occur.  It  was 
most  marked  by  the  inability  of  sustained  literary 
effort ;  the  old  habit  and  desire  remained,  but  after 
a  few  paragraphs  or  pages  the  pen  absolutely  re- 
fused its  task,  —  "  by  a  sort  of  fate,"  as  he  expressed 
it.  Thus  the  publication  of  Emerson's  memoir  was 
the  occasion  of  a  long  series  of  delightful  remi- 
niscences ;   but  to  the  hope  that   these  might  be 


HIS    LAST    VK  03 

wrought  into  Buch  a  picture  and  judgment  of  his 
life-long  friend  as  other  friends  would  Love  to  b^p, 
he  could  only  reply  by  pleading  the  utter  im] 
bility  of  the  task.     And  while  his  talk  (which  we 
would  test  sometimes  in  that 

rcr  through  the  wide  fields  of  history,  I 
ture,  and  philosophy  that  had  been  familiar  to  him, 
there  would  come  the  check  — oftener  as  time  went 
on — of  being  unable   to  recall   the   came   of  the 
person  or  the  p]  I    pie,  Leibnitz,  and   Newton 

—  Paris,  Genoa,  the  Riviera  —  occur  among  the 
names  that  had  to  be  Bupplied  to  Ml  the  blank. 
Bui  he  held  with  a  jealous  •    to  what   re- 

mained of  his  wonderful  verbal  memory,  and  among 
the  last  efforts  by  which  he  Btrove  to  keep  his 
grasp  of  conscious  intelligence  was  the  Bilenl  repe- 
tition to  himself  of  i  some  Length, 

from  German    \ ts,  which  had   been   among   the 

cherished  treasures  of  his  great   intellectual 
wealth. 

A  mind  so  individual,  and  so  far  apart  from  the 
conventional  beliefs  of  Christendom,  was  slow  in 
finding  wide  popular  recognition,  and  Long  failed  of 
its  proper  weight  among  those  "t"  its  generation. 
That  his  power  was  felt  in  his  circle  of  immediate 
influence  was  a  thing  of  course:  hi-  word  was 
always  "weighty  and  powerful/1 — the  more,  be- 
cause much  of  what  he  said,  and  often  tin'  b 
what  he  said,  had  to  d<>  imt  with  matt  pecu- 

lation, hut  with  every-day  ethics,  the  personal  ex- 
perience of  religion,  and  the  -  I  oui 
public  Life.     But  it  was  when  he  was  already  more 


94  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

than  fifty,  and  his  name  came  up  in  connection  with 
a  certain  academic  appointment  he  was  understood 
to  desire,  that  Dr.  Putnam  (then  in  authority  in 
the  university)  spoke  to  me  of  the  contrast  there 
was  between  the  honor  in  which  Dr.  Hedge  was 
held  among  those  of  his  own  profession  and  the 
ignorance  of  him  in  the  general  public.  This  lack 
of  general  appreciation  afterwards  changed  very 
fast  to  vague  respect  and  then  to  better  knowledge ; 
and  for  full  thirty  years  he  has  been  everywhere 
fully  recognized  as  without  a  peer  in  the  com- 
munion to  which  he  loyally  belonged  from  first  to 
last,  certainly  without  a  superior  among  the  intel- 
lectual leaders  of  our  country. 

This  change  in  his  attitude  towards  the  large 
world  of  those  more  remotely  interested  in  philoso- 
phy and  letters  had  to  do,  it  is  likely,  with  his 
removal  from  Bangor  to  Providence,  in  1850  ;  and 
again  with  his  removal  from  Providence  to  Brook- 
line,  in  1857.  Here  he  was  in  what  he  probably 
felt  to  be  his  proper  place,  as  one  of  the  immediate 
Boston  circle  ;  and,  besides,  it  was  now  that,  by 
persuasion  of  his  near  connection,  Eev.  Thomas  B. 
Fox,  he  took  editorial  charge,  for  a  few  years,  of 
the  "  Christian  Examiner,"  and  so  opened  new  chan- 
nels of  communication  with  that  wider  world.  At 
this  date,  too,  he  accepted  the  charge  of  the  depart- 
ment of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  the  Harvard  Di- 
vinity School,  which  he  held  for  twenty-one  years, 
receiving  meanwhile,  in  1872,  the  appointment  of 
Professor  of  German  Literature  in  the  University, 
which  he  held  till  1881. 


His   WRITINGS   AND   ENTLUINl  B. 

The  last  fori  of  his  life  were  thus  spent  in 

full   view  and    in  close  relations    with  that  I 
intellectual  public  bo  which  he  alia  strong 

i ion.     I'  Iso  the  period  of  hi 

activity  and  influence  as  a  writer.      The 
volumes    already    cited    -"Reason     in    Religion" 

:.  ■  w '  ■  j       I  the  Spirit"  (1877),  M  Atheism  in 
Philosophy  "  I  ad  "  Luther"  I  1 

with  "The   Primeval  World  of   II  Dradition" 

(1869),  and  a  thin  volume  of  translations  and 
n;il  poems  —have  been  the  way  marks  of  this  later 
career.  They  are  the  proper  Bubjecl  of  literary  crit- 
icism, which  I  do  not  propose  to  combine  with  this 
persona]  memorial;  and  his  place  in  the  future 
development  of  our  religious  thought  will  turn  upon 
the  judgment  that  shall  be  formed  upon  them.  To 
me  it  simply  happens  that  for  just  one  third  of  b 
century  I  was  thrown  into  o<  aal  relations 

with  the  man,  sometimes  as  helper  and  sometimes 
as  successor  in  his  work,  —  sometimes,  too,  in  a 
close  and  confidential  way,  —  and  this  seems  to  lay 
upon  nit'  the  charge  not  of  critic,  but  of  interpreter 
in  part  :  to  help,  if  I  maw  by  such  knowledf 
him  as  1  have  been  able  to  gain  through  personal 
communication,  in   the  right   understanding  of  the 
lesson  which  he  has  left  to  the  world.     The  L< 
truly  interpreted,  is  that  which  we  find  in  the  char- 
acter,   the  spiritual    endowment,  and    the    mental 
habit  of  the  man.     How  these  had  their  roots  in  the 
antecedents  and  their  growth  in  the  earlier 
his  career,  it  has  been  my  attempt  to  Bhow.     Ami 
with  this   key   it   is    my  hope  that   the  work  of  his 


96  FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE. 

pen  and  hand  —  which  with  every  gifted  and  original 
mind  is  a  sort  of  hieroglyph,  needing  that  clew  to  its 
proper  reading  —  may  be  the  better  understood.  I 
am  sure  that  the  man  himself  will  receive  his  full 
meed  of  loving  honor. 


V. 
SOME    5TOUNGEE    MEMORIES. 

BEFORE  closing  this  record,  which  is  bo  Largely 
made  up  of  persona]  recollections  and  im- 
ims  fitting  to  include  in  it  the  Dames 
of  .t  few  whose  history  belongs  to  a  later  day,  most 
of  whom  were  my  own  contemporaries  and  com- 
panions. In  the  tender  words  of  Benry  Vaughan, 
"they  are  all  gone  into  the  world  of  Light/'  and 
remain  our  examples  of  the  "  holy  hope  and  high 
humility,"  which  belong  to  the  ideal  of  Life  we 
cherished  together.  What  1  would  recall  of  them 
is  not  anything  that  would  make  the  faintest  out- 
line of  a  biography  or  him  of  criticism,  hut  only 
some  touch  or  memory,  not  elsewb 
which  iii  justice   to  them  I    would  not    willingly    let 

(lie. 

First,  however,  two  or  three  mimes  occur,  mark- 
ing the  transition  from  the  time  I  have  been  chiefly 
dealing  with  to  that  which  i>  properly  of  my  own 
generation.  The  impression  one  gets  from  the  com- 
panionship, in  later  life,  of  those  old  enough  to  have 
been  once  Looked  up  to  as  his  teachers  ami  guides 
is  the  one  I  wish  here  very  briefly  to  recall.  This 
impression  some  of  us  have  had  in  the  memory  of 
a  well-marked  group  of  men,  examples  of  a  sp< 

7 


98  SOME   YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

form  of  idealism  more  familiar  once  than  now,  who 
made,  as  it  were,  a  "  bridge  of  light "  that  brought 
over  the  finest  faith  of  an  older  generation  into  the 
new  intellectual  conditions  by  which  we  found  our- 
selves surrounded  ;  whose  generous  interpretation 
of  that  faith  saved  many  a  mind  from  the  sterile 
doubt  which  a  period  of  rationalizing  criticism 
might  else  have  carried  with  it. 

It  was  something,  in  that  day,  to  be  a  herald  and 
interpreter  of  the  new  light  that  (to  the  deep  mis- 
giving of  some  of  our  best  teachers)  was  breaking 
over  upon  us  out  of  Germany,  —  to  be  a  loving 
expositor  of  Schleiermacher  and  Goethe,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  keep  all  the  pure  single-heartedness 
of  "  the  faith  which  was  once  delivered  to  the 
saints,"  through  such  apostles  as  Freeman  and 
Channing.  This  service  James  Freeman  Clarke, 
more  perhaps  than  any  single  man,  has  done  for  us ; 
but  in  doing  it  he  was  one  of  a  goodly  company. 
It  seems  as  if  no  one  who  had  not  felt  in  its  prime 
the  glow  of  that  quickening  movement  of  the 
Spirit  could  quite  know  how  much  that  group  of 
men  have  been  to  those  who  came  a  little  after 
them.  It  happened  that  I  was  in  California  when 
the  death  of  William  Henry  Channing  had  just 
left  Dr.  Clarke  the  sole  survivor  of  that  group ;  and 
I  was  moved  to  express  to  him  by  letter  my  sense 
of  this  peculiar  debt.     His  reply  was  as  follows  :  — 

"  I  received  your  very  kind  letter,  and  it  gave  me 
very  great  pleasure.  Your  description  of  the  interest 
in  the  group  of  which  Theodore  Parker,  William 
Henry  Channing,  James  H.  Perkins.  George  Ripley, 


JAMES    FREEMAN    CLARKE. 

and  others  were  members,  and  with  winch  J  also  had 
:  being  associated,  was  peculiarly  pleas- 
ing and  touched  me  nearly,  il  trange  are  the 
influences  which  act  on  us  I  There  was  our  poor  little 
'Western  Messenger,5  which  found  you  out  in  North- 
borough,  and  found  our  dear  brother  Conant  in 
Chicago,  and  in  which  we  put  the  best  life  we  had- 
How  well  James  II.  Perkins  wrote!  When  if 
printed  in  Louisville,  I  had  to  be  publish' 
contributor,  proof-reader,  and  boy  to  park  up  the 
copies  and  carry  them  to  the  post-office.     Bui    I 

joyed    n.     A:;d   you  read  *Th lore*  too,  and  went 

to  Anion-  Ball]     I  have  scarcely  ever  heard  of  any 
one's  reading  'Theodore,'  but,  if  you  liked  it,  perhaps 
others  also  liked  it.     Every  man  who  writ. 
or  preaches  a  Bermon  casts  his  bread  on  the  w 

happy  if  he    finds  it,   again   after  many   days.      [1 

very  kind  of  you  to  write  to  me  as  yon  have  done, 

and    your    kindly    appreciation    of    some    of    my 

efforts  warms  my  heart.     We  do  not  care 

as    we   grow   old,    but    we   always   are   made    happy    by 
sympathy. 

•  ( lommon  m  light  is  1<>\  e, 
And  its  familiar  voice  vreariea  do! 

While  of  Dr.  Clarke's  many  and  cho  -  the 

greatest  was  charity,  —  which  we  may  here  interpret 
as  that  tine  and  rare  quality  which  drew  men  to  him 
in  confiding  sympathy, —  he  could  be  valiant  for 
the  right  with  a  courage  as  invincible  and  obstinate 
as  any  champion  of  the  Bword.  I  rememl 
strange  scene  in  Faneuil  Hall  in  1847,  when,  with- 
out hesitation  as  without  effect,  he  pressed  his 
word   of   "sweet   reasonableness"    upon    a    Btormy 


100  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

crowd,  —  when  the  hall  fairly  glistened  with  the 
shining  caps  of  a  valiant  crew  mustered  in  for  the 
war  with  Mexico.  One  can  point  to  at  least  three 
distinct  issues  in  these  later  years  of  political  note, 
in  which  that  serene  conviction  of  duty,  backed  by 
no  little  hardihood  of  temper,  left  a  definite  mark 
upon  the  event,  the  chief  of  them  being  his  defence 
of  independent  politics  in  the  convention  at  Worces- 
ter. But  in  general  he  has  left  the  impression  of 
one  averse  to  contention  and  the  strife  of  tongues. 
No  one  that  we  can  anywhere  recall  has  led  the 
intellectual  life  in  an  atmosphere  quite  so  radiant 
with  the  gladness  and  affection  of  a  great  host  of 
friends ;  no  apostle  of  the  Word,  whom  we  can 
readily  name,  has  sent  forth  that  word  so  penetrat- 
ing and  so  broadly  into  the  hearts  of  those  waiting 
to  be  delivered  from  bondage  to  error  and  fear,  who 
received  it  in  the  spirit  of  glad  confidence  which 
was  so  eminently  the  spirit  of  his  gospel. 

It  is  now  a  great  while  ago  —  in  fact,  some  years 
more  than  sixty  —  that  I  remember  hearing  read,  in 
my  father's  vestry,  a  little  tract  which  may  be 
called  the  first  sounding  of  the  key-note  of  Unitarian 
missions  in  the  West.  It  was  in  the  form  of  a 
letter  written  from  Ephraim  Peabody  (then  in 
Cincinnati)  to  George  Putnam.  I  believe  it  was 
the  same  tract  which  keenly  interested  William  G. 
Eliot,  then  completing  his  course  in  the  Cambridge 
Divinity  School.  As  I  heard  the  account  from  his 
mother  (who  was,  long  after,  a  member  of  my 
congregation  in  Washington),  he  resolved  at  once, 


WILLIAM    GREKNLEA?    F.I.:  101 

witli  the  tenacity  of  purpose  en  i  !  him, 

that  the  West  should  be  his  field;  and  it  wi 
a  call  from  without,  or  an  invitation  in  any  - 
hut  a  stu.ly  of  the  map  of  the  United  States,  that 
first  made  him,  in   that  early  day  ol   tedious  and 
difficult  travel,  fix   <>n  a  pi  i  remote  and   un- 

promising        3t  L  ii 

and  disappointed  at  this  resolve,  for  he   ■ 

bo  them  ;  and  they  had  fond  hop  b         B 
settlement,  which  would  have  kept  him  nearer,  and 
given  what   »  brilliant   opportunity. 

Finding  him  inflexible,  his  father  at  I  id  to 

him  :  "Go  where  you  think  it  is  right  I  will  find 
you  in  clothes,  and  where  you  go,  no  doubl 
will  have  food  and  lodging;  and  God  be  with  you, 
my  son."  At  the  beginning  he  found  an  audience 
of  thirty,  —  at  best,  perhaps  twice  as  many.  At 
tin*   end  of  >ix  months  he  had  b  n  «»f 

nine,  but,  of  these,  seven  were  resolved  t<>  stand  by 
him;  and  by  the  end  of  the  year  they  wen-  in- 
d  to  two  hundred  The  result  makes  perhaps 
the  most  eventful  chapter  in  our  denominational 
history.  When  once,  during  the  war.  a  broth 
niinc,  visiting  St.  Louis  on  busi  I  S  aitary 

Commission,  said  to  a  friend,  "  I  suppose  that  Dr. 
Eliot  has  done  as  much  as  any  man  to  e  wouri 

to  the  Union  and  make  it  a  free  State,"  tin-  reply 
was  instant  and  prompt  :  "As  much  as  any  man1 
Dr.  Eliot  has  done  ten  times  more  for  that  than 
any  other  ten  men  put  together  I " 

There  was  a  time — in  1847,  I  think  —  when  it 
was  proposed  and  voted  to  invite  Dr.  Eliot  to  Berve 


102  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

as  Secretary  of  the  American  Unitarian  Association. 
Antislavery  feeling  at  this  time  ran  high ;  the 
action  of  religious  bodies  was  jealously  watched, 
and  the  Association  was  at  once  sharply  attacked 
for  putting  its  confidence  in  a  man  supposed  to 
have  some  complicity  with  slavery,  —  nay,  charged 
with  being  himself  a  slaveholder.  The  true  story 
shows  how  cruel  and  unjust  such  charges  sometimes 
were.  For  it  appears,  from  the  account  his  mother 
gave  to  me,  that  a  certain  gentleman,  to  whom  he 
was  under  obligation  for  much  kindness,  had  lived 
for  a  time  in  his  family,  bringing  a  servant-woman, 
—  a  slave,  —  to  whom  the  family  became  much 
attached.  Afterwards  it  happened  that  the  gentle- 
man failed  in  business ;  and,  under  the  cruel  law 
of  slavery,  the  woman  was  liable  to  be  seized  for 
his  debt,  and  sold  to  the  Southern  market.  Full  of 
distress,  she  appealed  to  Mr.  Eliot,  who  paid  out  of 
his  own  means  the  price  of  her  ransom,  never  took 
a  title-deed  or  was  her  legal  owner,  —  unless  it 
might  be  technically,  till  her  free  papers  could  be 
made  out, — and  simply  accepted  her  verbal  assur- 
ance that  her  wages  would  go  towards  the  payment 
of  the  sum  advanced.  Only  a  small  part  of  this 
was  ever  in  fact  repaid  ;  for  when,  some  time  after, 
Mr.  Eliot  took  a  journey  to  Europe,  he  cancelled  the 
debt,  giving  her  a  small  house  and  a  cow,  and  she 
lived  thenceforth  in  comfort  and  independence. 
Such  is  the  true  story  of  his  "  slaveholding." 

And   who   is    there  that   can    possibly    make   a 
younger   generation  understand  what  the  name  of 


THOMAS    BTASB    KINi  103 

Thomas  Starr  King  means  to  those  who  knew  and 
loved   him  '.       A    noble    memorial    statue   in    S 
Francisco;  the  well-known  Btory  I  Scotl 

who  Baid  he  had  heard  that  California   \'. 
to  the    Union  by   "a  young   man  of   the  name  of 
King;*1  two  small   volumes,  without   the  lu 
those  read  them  by,  —  these  are  all,  or  Dearly 

all,  th.it  the  general  public  can  ever  know  "t  him. 
Yet  to  us  his  presence  and  hi-  Loss  Beem  bo  near! 
Many  are  the  recollections  cherished  of  thai  young 
lit'.',  which  ought  to  1.  inting 

than  was  given  by  his  friend   Mr.  Whipple  i 
in! roducl ion  t<>  tin-  volume  of  his  D  :  the 

let  ters,  in  ]'  trl icular,  of  which  none 
t  here,  would  •  Lh  ing  pi<  ture  of  that 

bright   and    versatile    intelligence    than    any    more 
formal  composition.     But  who  i>  there  to  pri 
sui'li  memorials  from  fading  into  the  dimn< 
istered  tradition  i     In  his  brief  publi 
and  in  the  charm  of  friendly  intercom 
all   transparent  and  i  daylight    to  wh 

would  come  and  hear,  as  it'  there  were  no  shadow 
behind  that  beaming  and  winning  personality:  the 
Luminous  eye,  the  noble  quality  of  v<  irtain 

sag  t  gayety  of  temper,  quick  wit  and  humor,  an 
intelligence  to  which  the  term  "lucid"  as  well  as 
wide,  swift,  and  vigorous  belonged  more  absolutely 
than  to  any  other  I  have  ever  known,  drew  men  to 
him  as  to  a  friend  whom  not  only  they  would  in- 
evitably love,  hut  might  easily  read  through  and 
through.  But  a  c  >rrespondence  with  him  early 
in  the  fifties   contained  one  letter  (lent,  alas,  and 


104         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

lost)  which  threw  a  deeper  light  on  his  earlier 
life  than  anything  that  yet  survives.  And  there 
were  hints  and  confessions  from  his  lips  in  conver- 
sation, —  not,  surely,  of  anything  that  stained  the 
crystal  purity  of  his  life,  but  which  showed  a  vein 
that  appealed  to  one's  sympathy  in  quite  another 
way  than  the  public  could  ever  know.  In  particu- 
lar, he  lamented  a  certain  "  coldness "  of  temper- 
ament which  no  one  could  ever  suspect  under  the 
charm  of  that  genial  companionship.  Dr.  Hale 
has  told  of  his  distrust  of  his  own  ability  to  speak 
out,  spontaneously,  such  words  as  flow  from  heart 
to  heart.  I  happened  myself  to  know  (being  just 
then  his  guest)  that  what  seemed,  on  a  public  occa- 
sion, to  be  an  easy  flow  of  unpremeditated  wit  was 
anxiously  studied  and  put  together  in  the  spare 
minutes  of  a  very  busy  week.  The  natural  gener- 
osity of  his  temper  towards  certain  matters  of 
public  right  was  cramped  by  a  fastidious  critical 
sense  that  shut  off  his  sympathy  with  some  popular 
moral  movements  of  his  day,  and  made  the  ruder 
methods  of  many  "reformers"  strongly  repugnant 
to  him ;  and  the  full  wealth  and  strength  of  his 
nature,  we  may  well  believe,  would  never  have 
shown  itself,  but  for  the  magnificent  opportunity 
of  those  last  four  years,  —  when  the  cause  was 
that  of  national  unity  as  well  as  personal  liberty  ; 
when  for  once  he  threw  himself  upon  the  tide 
of  a  noble  passion  without  any  misgiving  or  with- 
holding. I  copy  here  from  a  letter  of  this  later 
period,  written  in  San  Francisco  in  February, 
1862:  — 


THOMAS   STARB    KING.  105 

WI   am   tolerably   well,   and   intolerably   at   work, 
much   in  ii  year  as  during  th< 
.  and  am  speaking  as  much  as   n.  voice 

will  permit.     Ajnong  my  r 

nine  were 

•  11  that  I  am  rej 
ire  oot   utterly  barbarous   here, 
chapters  of  [a  recent  book]  Btirred  me  bo  much  that 
I   wrote  a  Lecture  on  '  9  nd  its 

I  ."  which   I  mmed 

houses  in  our  church  and    two  or  tin- 
where.     I  am  I  \  year  or  i  from  the 

dear  East  and  precioui  .     Then 

Europe,  —  perhaps  shall  have  earned  the  rig 
it.  .  .  .  \\  [Port 

Royal,  etc.],     I  arranged  a  dtatdon  Ln  church, 

last  Sunday,  in    which    the    music  w 

sudi  a  jam !     But  I   fear  the  dipl 

a  beat,  but  the  f  \  ■  that 

God  has  a  purpose  of  winding  hit  anaconda  around 

the  South,  which  won't  be  prevailed  on  to 

And  again,  from  a  letter  written  to  Dr.  M 

little  more   than  gil  WI  >re  the   writ  I 

(Jan.  \-2,  1864)  :  — 

"San    Francisco  is  t:  do  her  duty  again  on 

the   Sanitary  subscription.     We  Bhall    • 

year,  and  I  am  now  arranging  circulars  and  plans 
■are    $100,000    from    the   interior   of    ' 
Perhaps  I  shall  have  to  take  the  Btump  ire  it. 

l>ut    my  church  duties  are   now   very   heavy,   and  my 

I   Bhould  like  to  give  the 

ihurch,  with  its  grand  coi  >n  and   ample 

treasury,  into  the  keeping  of  B  new  voice  and  spirit. 


106  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

I  have  no  carnal  pride  in  it  whatever,  but  a  sincere 
longing  to  go  into  quiet  and  seclusion.  The  moment 
the  war  is  over,  I  shall  run  like  a  mole  for  a  burrow 
—  perhaps  Burroughs  Place  again." 

From  a  letter  of  earlier  date  (1851),  I  copy  this 
illustration  of  the  conservative  temper  of  those 
days : — 

"  Perhaps  you  have  seen  in  the  papers  that  I  de- 
livered a  Fourth  of  July  address  before  [a  certain 
New  England  town].  I  have  heard  of  '  Hunkers ' 
and  '  Union  men,'  but  never  saw  the  genuine  article 
till  I  made  acquaintance  with  the  leading  citizens  of 

.     They  were  determined,  they  told  me,  to  have 

no  one  as  an  orator  at  all  tinctured  with  Free-soilism  ; 
and  after  trying  in  vain  to  get  either  Choate,  Cashing, 
Frank  Pierce,  or  B.  F.  Hallet,  telegraphed  to  me, 
relying  on  the  newspaper  reports  of  the  Artillery 
sermon  that  I  was  '  national '  and  true  blue.  I  was 
in  what  Charles  Francis  Adams  calls  'the  tight 
pinch,'  but  succeeded  in  satisfying  all  but  two  or 
three  of  them  in  the  address,  and  those  took  excep- 
tion to  some  remarks  which  implied  that  the  institu- 
tions of  the  South  were  not  so  consistent  with  the 
American  idea  as  those  of  the  North.  I  was  de- 
fended by  others  of  the  committee  on  the  ground  that 
my  language  ivas  misunderstood  and  that  I  could  not 
have  meant  so  !  " 

He  said  once,  pleasantly,  that  in  the  new  Cali- 
fornian  creed  "  we  are  no  second-adventists ;  we 
believe  in  no  '  thousand  years,'  but  in  thousands  a 
year."  But  no  one,  surely,  was  more  generous  of 
his  own  means,  or  more  faithful  in  urging  the  re- 
sponsibility of   those   who   had  greater.      I    insert 


THOMAS   BTARB    KING.  107 

by  request  of  a  friend,  a  characteristic  bit  of 
b    pract  ical    '1  of   bis   od    u  The    Christian 

Dollar":  — 

••  \\  is  the  duty  of  every  man,  with   any 

means,   to  proportion    in   his    Burplu 

penses;  to  have  a  conscientious  order  with  regard  to 

hich  his  Buperfluous  dollars  i 
Over  against  every  promin  for   ;i    per- 

Bonal  Luxury,  I  rd  book  i 

some  entry   in  favor  of  the  cause  i  I  -   and 

Buffering  humanity;  for  every  guinea  that  goes  into 
;i  theatre,  a  museum,  an  athenaeum,  or  the  treasury 
of  ;i  rausio  ball,  there  ought  to  be  some  twin-guinea 
pledged    i  ith,  or   flying   on   Borne   errand   of 

mercy   in   a   city    bo   crowded   with    mi  this. 

Then  we  have  a  right  to  our  amusements  and  our 
grateful  pleasures.  Otherwise  we  have  no  right  t<> 
them,  but  are  liable  every  moment  to  impeachment 
in    the   court    of   right  and  charity  for   our 

treachery  to  heaven  and  our  rao 

Sonic  years  ago  I  had  a  conversation  with  our 
oil  friend,  air.  Oliver  Steele,  of  Buffalo,  who  told 
■  me  facts  that  Beem  to  me  very  interesting 
about  Starr  King's  parentage,  —  he  having  been  a 
member  of  his  father's  congregation  when  preaching 
as  a  Universalist  minister  in  Connecticut  Mr 
King,  the  father,  was  born  in  New  Fork  City,  and 
it  was  through  his  mother  that  the  son  inherited 
the  -Main  of  Irish  blood  which  I  had  been  told  of 
in  accounting  for  his  remarkable  vivacity  of  mind 
and  wit :  the  father,  1  have  heard,  was  even  a  more 
brilliant  talker  and   story-teller   than   the   son.      He 


108  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

had  been  educated  as  a  mechanic,  —  I  forget  in 
what  trade,  —  and  had  gained  a  certain  fame  among 
his  fellows  as  a  ready  and  eloquent  speaker  in  their 
trade  meetings.  It  was  customary  for  the  New 
York  trades,  in  turn,  to  elect  an  orator  —  generally 
a  lawyer,  preacher,  or  politician  of  local  fame  —  to 
give  an  annual  address  before  their  united  societies  ; 
and  when  the  turn  of  his  own  came,  proud  of  their 
fellow-craftsman,  they  broke  the  precedent  by  ap- 
pointing him  speaker  of  the  year.  His  address 
made  such  an  impression  that  he  was  soon  per- 
suaded to  lay  down  the  tools  of  his  craft  and  take 
the  post  of  preacher,  which  he  filled  with  eminent 
success  in  New  York,  Portsmouth,  and  Charles- 
town,  till  his  death  about  the  age  of  forty.  Starr 
King  had  said  more  than  once  that  he  never  ex- 
pected to  outlive  his  father's  age :  the  horizon,  up 
to  seventy  or  eighty,  looked  very  far  and  dim  to 
him.     In  fact,  he  died  early  in  his  fortieth  year. 

John  Weiss,  too,  was  a  man  whom  one  should 
have  known  in  person  to  know  at  all  as  he  was,  — 
his  gayety  and  invincible  wit,  and  the  singular  dash 
of  humor  with  a  pathetic  something  that  was  partly 
ill-health  and  partly  a  certain  reckless  disregard  of 
self,  along  with  his  busy,  immense,  yet  largely 
fruitless  industry  (for  masses  of  fact  laboriously 
gathered  in  his  commonplace-book  seemed  never  to 
find  a  use),  and  the  eccentricity  of  style  and  temper 
that  handicapped  his  real  genius.  All  these  are 
matters  of  keen  personal  impression,  and  need  to 
be  dealt  with  —  as  they  have  been  —  by  one  (0.  B. 


JOHM   m  109 

Frothingham]  with  whom  they  made  part  of  a  near 
and  affectionate  memory  of  the  man. 

He  was  three  me  in  collegi       II  - 

father,  I  have  understood,  waa  a  barber  in  the  town 
of  W  a  ( German  by  blood  and   I  •    i 

Jew,  — to  which  last  '  have  sometimes  ascribed  the 
Bingular  fervor  of  his  religious  genius.  The  :  I 
ever  saw  of  him  was  in  the  c  ird,  where  he 

had  a  sort   of  ovation   from  his  classmates  on  his 
return  from  a  few  months' rustication,  and  h 
like  a  child  among  them     I  dy's  buj 

who  knew  his  quninf  Levity  and  drollery,  he  joined 
our  class  in  the  Divinity  School,  spending 
the  coarse  in  Germany.  Meeting  him  from  time 
to  time  in  the  "  ETook-and-Ladder,"  and  having 
wards  some  Bpecial  links  of  communicatiou  with 
him  while  he  waa  in  New  Bedford,  I  have  felt  per- 
sonally nearer  to  him  than  any  degree  of  mental 
sympathy  I  could  claim  might  seem  to  warrant. 
Having  at  one  time  something  to  do  with  the 
"  Christian  Examiner/1  I  I  ing  from 

him  one  ot  two  papers  which  I  greatly  valued 
But    he  was  alwa;  citric,  kicking  out  of   the 

i,  and  enveloping  his  brilliant  parts  more  and 
more  in  a  thicket  of  Bparkling  rhetoric  ;  hampered  by 
ill  health  and  persona]  anxieties;  but  having,  with 
a  certain  carelessness  of  appreciation  and  su< 
a  winning  sweetness  and  humility  at  bottom,  that 
made  everybody  fond  of  him.  I  tri  <1  on< 
him  to  w.»rk  out  a  Bketch  of  Jesus  "  the  Galilean," 
such  as  he  had  given  the  hint  of  in  conversation, 
and  might   have  developed  with  great  vigor  if  he 


110         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMOEIES. 

had  chosen  ;  but  he  appears  never  to  have  put  his 
hand  to  it.  He  said,  with  much  emphasis,  that  the 
popular  theory  of  Jesus,  his  mildness  and  serenity 
and  so  on,  was  thoroughly  mistaken  :  he  was  a  man, 
on  the  other  hand,  of  deep  and  powerful  nature, 
capable  of  strong  passion  and  high  political  enthu- 
siasm ;  his  most  characteristic  sayings  were  not  the 
Beatitudes  and  moral  precepts,  but  rather  his  hot 
denunciation  of  Scribes  and  Pharisees.  But  of  this, 
and  of  many  another  judgment  daringly  unconven- 
tional, his  full  word  was  never  spoken. 

The  mind  of  one  so  spontaneous  and  versatile  is 
best  read  in  his  unstudied  correspondence  ;  and  I 
will  fill  out  the  hints  already  given,  by  transcribing 
at  some  length  from  letters  which  revive,  by  some 
characteristic  touches,  the  interests  and  discussions 
of  those  days  :  — 

New  Bedford,  January  29,  1849. 

All  thoughts  of  correspondence  were  interrupted 
by  a  fire,  of  which  perhaps  you  have  heard  ;  and  now 
I  am  plunged  in  the  lassitude  consequent  upon  the 
material  and  mental  dilapidations  of  the  past  three 
weeks,  including  the  rehabilitation  of  another  dwelling. 
But,  upon  opening  my  ill-used  secretary  again,  I  find 
your  epistle,  which  was  good  enough  to  have  deserved 
an  earlier  answer.  So,  in  spite  of  a  sort  of  general 
apathy,  which  has  seized  me  in  consequence  of  late 
excitements,  I  '11  acknowledge  said  letter  at  the  least. 
Were  you  ever  burnt  out  (I  doubt  not  the  Spirit  has 
flamed  over  your  prairie,  and  that  you  have  been 
tried  "  as  by  fire,"  but)  burnt  out  physically,  and 
left  with  two  or  three  hundred  wrecks  of  books,  to 


JOHN    W  111 

Say  notliing  of  a  genera]  redaction  of  your  valuables  ? 
It  is  astonishing  how  much  c  bed  in 

a  kindly  way  in   twenty  minutes.     1".  tgular 

rebellion  in  1834,  conducted  with  dam  \  final 

.  was  not  mi  Idenly 

decant  the  contents   of    three  or   four  neighboring 

is   in   your  rooms,  and   the    fire 

eing  the  dirty  work.     The  warm-hearted  fellow 

would  have  made  clean  work. 

Such,  then,  is  our  latest  noticeable  circumstance; 

and    I   can    fairly  set    down  a  Qfl  tiOD  as  having 

been  exp<  riena  I.    Note,  too,  thai  I  the  chil- 

dren of  light  was  wise  enough  to  have  Ids  library 
insured,  also  furniture  and  wearing  apparel.     Who 

shall  say,  after  lli.it  policy,  that  I  am  of  the  impracti- 
Cablea  '.'      Bu1    you  would   like  to  know  what 

on  ;  and  I.  smbarrac 

little  to  communicate.    The  gold  f< 
in  this  city,  and  it  is  supposed   that   from  four  to  five 
hundred  stalwart  men  will  emigrate.    They  all  belong 
to    the    h.tter  •mmunir -.  . 

mechanics    and    clerks.       I  Uj>«ui    the    whale- 

fishery  is  at   present   had.     v  a  tit  out  here 

and  carry  passengers j   but  the  place  produces  noth- 
ing to  export.     All  freight  for  California  is  col] 
from   other    quarters.     At    the    least,   the    whaling 

will    languish    for    a    COUple   Of  year-,    with   little   hut 

passenger  money  to   supply   its   place;  and  if   they 

should     commence     whaling     from      San      Fran 

ii  would  materially  damage  this  city.  If  there  is 
a  bubble  and  it  hursts,  why.  then  all  speculation  col- 
lapses also.  But  is  it  nut  a  urr,i:it  way  of  founding 
a  new  State  and  id'  excluding  slave-labor  ?  and  was 
not  tin1  year   ISIS  mirabi 


112  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

Emerson  came  down  here,  and  gave  the  pleasantest, 
most  genial,  most  natural  and  generous  lecture  that 
I  have  heard  from  him,  on  the  English.  The  appre- 
hensive New  England  Platonist  magnified  discrimi- 
natingly his  beef-eating  and  sensible,  worldly  mother. 
What  an  eye  he  has,  after  all,  for  national  character- 
istics !  You  know  they  say  that  all  his  geese  are 
swans ;  but,  allowing  for  a  faint  tint  of  rose  caught 
from  the  hot-house  hospitality  which  received  him, 
he  gave  them  no  more  than  their  due,  and  it  was 
refreshing  to  hear  the  fulgid  mystic,  "who  is  one 
slope  from  head  to  foot,"  talking  about  these  men 
who  "clinch  every  nail  they  drive,"  and  who  pursue 
Professor  Bronson's  method  of  abdominal  speaking. 
Excuse  the  slender  material  of  this  letter,  but  ac- 
cept the  intention  of  acknowledging  your  favor  and 
asking  for  more. 

May  28,  1849. 

Do  you  think  that  we  up  here  read  much,  and 
settle  all  questions?  Eond  delusion!  We  proceed 
in  the  old  way,  and  do  not  startle  each  other  with 
great  discoveries.  We  might  as  well  read  iEschylus 
and  Peirce  as  for  anything  that  we  do  to  set  forward 
Christianity  another  peg.  I  doubt  whether  even  the 
Hook-and-Ladder  divulges  anything.  They  may  look 
very  busy  and  mysterious,  but  they  have  nothing  to 
divulge.  Something  has  kept  me  from  their  meetings 
for  the  last  three  or  four  times,  so  that  my  judgment 
is  to  be  taken  as  merely  that  of  an  outsider,  who  has 
observed  nothing  uncommon  in  the  atmosphere,  and 
heard  no  explosion.  !STor  will  the  tracts  of  William 
B.  Greene  help  the  matter.  They  are  smart,  but  do 
not  increase  the  planet's  velocity.     One  upon  Trans- 


John   w:  113 

oendentalism  contains  errors.  But  lie  must  write 
ami  publish.     B  ired,  however,  that  he  will  not 

reinforce  the  total  Impression  made  a]  mind 

by  JSschylus  ami  Benny  1'  1 1  at  at- 

tackin  orthodox  mil  p  in  Wbr- 

rnty.     By  a  Bmart  and  Budden  dig  in  the  pit 
of  th«i  stomach,  he  deprives  the  inoffensive  mi 
wind,  so  that  one  hears  no  i        ne  is  emi- 

nently useful    in   this   line.     Ii    any  li 
thrown   on  the  hist  (  o   by 

the  '•  Antiquil  j  j.t,"  it  h  dlen  upon 

your  correspondent,  who  is  thus  comp  Leave 

you  in  the  dark,  merely  Baying  that  1 
from  which  Bomething  may  be  expected  on  that  point, 
is   m  •  mpleted.     Neith< 

appear  to  have  modified  the  current  speculation  ;  and 
it  can  hardly  be  considered  as  a  U 
cept  as  supine  in  (A)tim),  Bince  it   i  ufined  to 

himself.     The  a-priori  autobiography  is  by  our  friend 
who  knocks  the  wind  out  of   dying   minisl 
the  manner  of  Mexican  nurses,  and  doubtless  with 

the    same    humane    intention    of   putting   them   I 

pain.  Part  of  it  was  read  to  the  Hook-and-Ladder, 
and  created  inextinguishable  peals  of  laughter,  which 
lie  bore  so  genially  that  I  thought  there  was  Bome- 
thing in  his  essay.  Bach  one  can  judge  for  himself. 
The  introduction  seems  to  be  a  brisk  flirtation  with 
Pythagoras  and  the  science  (?)  of  numbers.  The 
autobiography  purported  to  genuine  experience 

of  Greene's  in  Florida,  and  as  such  is  valuable.  .  .  . 
Parker  does  not  yet  forget  his  wrongs.  That  is  the 
•  thing  I  know  about  him.  He  flourishes  and 
lias  influence  ;  but  he  begins  to  complain  of  his  head 
again.     He  works  too  hard.     There  is  no  contro 

8 


114  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

with  him  now ;  but  the  Boston  Association  does  not 
yet  fraternize  with  him,  and  the  whole  matter  is  in 
abeyance.  The  Massachusetts  Quarterly  ought  to 
do  what  you  say,  and  I  am  confident  that  it  will  come 
out  right.  Bipley  is  reviewing  Bushnell.  The  Ex- 
aminer will  remain  about  so-so.  Parker  skims  those 
blue  foreign  pamphlets,  but  what  he  does  with  the 
cream  is  not  known  to  me.  I  have  not  seen  one  for 
a  year  or  two. 

By  far  the  most  labored  work  of  Weiss's  hand  was 
the  Life  of  Theodore  Parker,  with  copious  editing  of 
bis  correspondence.  This  was  a  task  which  he 
sought  and  eagerly  undertook  as  a  labor  of  love, 
with  abundance  of  generous  appreciation  of  the 
subject,  but  with  the  drawback  of  too  little  near 
personal  acquaintance.  As  a  record  of  Parker's 
religious  life,  especially  by  the  free  use  made  of  his 
diary  and  correspondence,  it  is  incomparably  rich, 
and,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Frothingham's  admirable  biog- 
raphy, it  remains  as  the  best  source  of  our  acquaint- 
ance with  the  man.  Those  who  knew  Weiss  inti- 
mately, and  had  a  key  to  the  dialect  in  which  he 
wrote,  were  hardly  sensible  (as  it  proved)  of  some 
things  in  that  book  which  gave  needless  prejudice 
and  pain  to  many  excellent  persons.  It  happened, 
too,  that  certain  material  was  held  back,  for  personal 
reasons  or  in  hope  of  some  completer  future  record, 
so  that  on  one  side  the  book  was  left  defective,  — 
Parker's  relations  with  Emerson,  for  example.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  where  no  sensitive  nerve  was 
touched,  it  was  a  great  delight  to  see  that  eager  and 
strong  intelligence,  colored  and  heated  by  so  much 


.mux    WEISS.  —  l .    N.    KNAFP.  1  1  5 

of  fervid  passion,  as  interpreted  by  the  fine,  kern, 
and  ardent  genius  of  the  biographer.  And  some 
Bingle  chapters  in  that  book  restore  to  ns  better  than 
anything  else  we  know  the  very  form  and  pressure 
of  the  time  it  dealt  with. 

( >ne  think-  of  W  !  a  pathetically  trum 

career,  when  compared  with  the  wealth  of  his 
and  the  brightness  of  his  promise.     This  impret 
coiiics  partly,  no  doubt,  from  the  circumstance  that 
|        ensitive  and  -   individualism  took  him 

away,  in  the  lattei  I  his  life,  more  and  more 

from  the  associations  and  companionships  I 
with;  and  so  the   impression    may  be  a   fallacious 
one.    Certainly,  he  was  very  impatient  of  the  d 
ment   towards  a  more   effective    organizing  of   the 
Unitarian  forces  in  the  years  jus!  following  the 
and,  as  -""ii  as  the  "  Radical "  w  a  i  he  replied 

to  the  kindly  words  of  Dr.  Bellows  and  others,  that 
his  loyalty  was  due  totli.it  other,  not  t<>  our  older 
organs  "f  thought.     He  fell  himself  in  his  | 

to  he  more  of  a  31  I  mong    ns   than  he'  need  t" 

b  done,  and  said  to  ..ne  of  our  younger  free- 
thinkers once,  half  sadly,  that  he  himself, and  :i  few 
others,  had  paid  the  price  of  that  liberty  in  think- 
ing which  tin-  later  generation  have  enjoyed 

Frederick  Newman  Knapp,  a  cousin  "f  Dr 
lows,  and  t<>  many  others  a  very  dear  friend  ami 
beloved  brother,  was  taken  out  (^  our  Bight  on  Sat- 
urday, the  12th  of  January,  1889,  the  nervous 
malady  which  had  caused  him  severe  Buffering 
through  much  of  his  last   few  years  terminating  in 


116  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

"  a  clot  in  the  heart,  producing  instantaneous  death."1 
Surely,  in  the  multiplied  services  which  he  rendered 
during  his  lifetime  of  sixty-seven  years,  few  can  have 
left  a  record  so  full  of  cheery  usefulness.  His  two 
brief  pastorates,  in  Brookline  and  in  Plymouth  (with 
the  briefer  ones  at  Yonkers,  N.  Y.,  and  at  East 
Cambridge),  were  filled  with  conscientious  fidelity, 
like  everything  he  did,  but  were  hardly  the  most 
characteristic  or  most  successful  part  of  his  work. 
The  great  opportunity  of  his  life  was  when,  early  in 
the  war,  by  that  felicity  of  insight  in  Dr.  Bellows 
which  sometimes  came  like  a  great  inspiration,  "  he 
was  appointed  Assistant  Secretary  [of  the  Sanitary 
Commission],  and  created  and  ruled  the  Special 
Eelief  department,  of  which  the  Soldiers'  Home 
[with  which  his  name  was  identified  through  the 
years  that  followed]  was  a  very  small  part."  I  was 
with  him  in  Washington  for  a  few  days,  in  the 
summer  of  1864,  when  he  told  me,  with  a  detail  I 
wish  I  could  remember  now,  the  forlorn  and  lamen- 
table condition  of  the  discharged  or  disabled  men, 
homesick,  diseased,  wounded,  helpless,  friendless, 
who  were  to  be  found  by  the  ten  thousand,  thronged 
in  those  wide  streets  and  desolate  squares,  on  their 
weary  pilgrimage  —  it  might  be  to  their  home,  it 
might  be  to  their  grave. 

When  Mr.  Knapp  sought  to  give  his  life  to  what 
seemed  the  one  great  duty  of  the  time,  in  whatever 

1  By  the  account  of  a  friend,  "  he  was  standing  in  his  parlor 
just  after  breakfast,  talking  to  a  boy,  when  suddenly  he  said,  Oh  ! 
rather  as  in  surprise  than  in  pain,  laying  his  hand  at  the  same  time 
upon  his  heart,  and  dropping  dead,  apparently  instantaneously.  He 
was  not,  for  God  took  him." 


FREDERICK    NEWMAN    KNA1T.  117 

field  it  should  be  most  wanted  form  of  it  was 

just  then  and  there  most  urgent;  and  his  singular 
sagacity,  sympathy,  and  genius  of  administration  were 
put  at  once  to  their  best  use.  It  has  been  lately 
said  that  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  of  those  men 
came  into  personal  relation  with  him,  and  received 
from  lu's  shrewd,  kindly,  and  practical  Lntelli| 
the  comfort  and  help  which  only  such  a  friend  could 
give.  Be  knew  very  well  the  risks  to  health,  the 
danger  especially  of  breaking  down  with  the  insid- 
ious   malaria    that    M  walketh    in    darkness,"   and  his 

ainst  it  was  an  example  "i  hi  I 
practical  sagacity.  I  occupied  In-  room  one  night, 
while  he  was  absent  on  Borne  remoter  charge :  it  was 
at:  r  a  sultry  September  day ;  and  early  in  the  even- 
ing his  attendant  had    a  glowing    Si  D  the 

grate  almost  within  arm's  reach  "t"  tin*  bed.     That, 
he  told  me,  had  been  done  immer  or 

winter,  since  he  first  took  charge,  and  t<>  it   h 
cribed   his   compl  lorn    from   any   disabling 

illness. 

But  his  duties  often  carried  him  away,  t"  serve  in 
the  crowded  horrors  of  transport  vessels  or  at  the 
front  in  the  edge  of  battle.  It  was  a  delight  to  hear 
him  tell  of  what  he  had  Been  and  shared  on  such 
occasions  with  his  associates  in  the  work,  Helen 
Gilson  and  others,  whose  names  live  with  us  as  a 
benediction;  of  his  kindly  relations,  too,  with  tin; 
colored  refugees,  and  of  the  slave-woman  with  her 
twin  daughters,  -  1  >ick  and  Jerry  "  I  named,  to  fulfil  a 
vow.  after  her  two  sons  who  had  been  Bold  av 
who  became  his  fast  friends  for  life,     Of  one  Buch 


118  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

time  it  is  recorded  that  when  he  had  been  warned, 
almost  ordered,  not  to  push  forward  into  the  Wilder- 
ness with  his  Sanitary  supply-train,  —  a  feat  which 
skirmishing  parties  in  the  woods  seemed  to  make 
impossible,  —  he  persisted  nevertheless,  and  was 
three  days  in  advance  of  the  regular  army  supplies, 
just  when  they  were  most  needed,  after  one  of  those 
horrible  engagements,  and  furnished  all  the  relief 
that  was  required.  This  is  not  the  only  example  of 
that  more  than  military  courage  which  was  found 
among  the  ministers  of  humanity  in  that  most  try- 
ing service;  but  it  should  be  told  as  one  example 
of  what  that  service  often  was.  In  recognition  of 
it,  he  was  (I  have  been  told)  the  only  man  who  had 
never  worn  the  uniform,  admitted  to  the  honor  and 
fellowship  of  the  "  Grand  Army  of  the  Bepublic." 

A  marked  characteristic  in  Mr.  Knapp  was  a 
happy  disposition  and  a  buoyancy  of  heart,  which  I 
cannot  recall  as  ever  once  abating  in  an  affectionate 
intercourse  —  first  as  pupil  and  teacher  —  extend- 
ing over  nearly  fifty  years.  Under  the  burdensome 
presence  of  cares,  in  personal  disappointments,  or 
when  suffering  from  sharp  illness,  that  peculiar 
buoyancy  of  spirit  seems  never  to  have  failed  him. 
That,  with  his  singularly  kind  and  sympathetic 
temper,  made  a  strong  point  in  the  personal  influence 
which  he  brought  to  bear  on  anything  he  had  once 
set  his  heart  upon.  When  a  student  in  college,  he 
did  a  thing  which  it  was  said  at  the  time  no  other 
person  could  possibly  have  done,  —  that  is,  to  build, 
by  willing  subscription  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men,  a  neat  and  much-needed  church,  without  debt, 


FBEDERU  MAX    KKAPP.  1  19 

in  Walpole,  X.  II.:  do  othei  one  mi  (lid. 

the  living  link  tietween  the  strong,  remarkable,  and 
influential  family  connection,  to  which  he  be! 
by  birth,  and  the  many  whom  he  won  by  the  charm 
of  bifl  infinite  good-humor,  and  hi-  unaffected  int 

in  all  thai  made  for  the  general  g 1.     I  remember 

that  ii  was  said  of  him  in  those  days,  in  testimony 
of  his  quick  intelligence,  —  ami  it  i>  confirmed  to 
me  now  by  the  '  testimony,  —  that  he  knew 

by  fen  ■  <      0]  tenta]  shepherds  1  t<>  do  | 

individual  sheep  of  the  two  hundred  that  made  his 
father's  flock. 

In   college,  by  his   remarkable   facility  in  mathe- 
matics, he  ;it  once  took  rank  in  a  !_: r< •  1 1  j »  of  thi 
his  own  class,  their  chief  being  one  of   the  most 
accomplished  men  of  science  in  the  count  ry,  Pi 
denl  Thomas  Hill,  with   whom   his   1  were 

those  "i'  close  affection,      for  I  do  not  think  he 
dreamed  of  rivalry  with  anybody.     It  i-  something 
not  quite  explained  t"  me,  that  with  thi-  brilliant 
promise   and   versatile  intelligence  he  had  a] 
contented  himself   so  easily    in    the  most    modest 
Bphere  and  the  quietest   lines  of  service.     After  the 
st rain  of  war-time  he  was  content  t«>  undertake  for 
a  while  the  modest  toil  <>f  raising  cranberries ;  while 
his  chief  and  most  durable  success  was  perhaps 
teacher  of  boys,     Not  long  after  the  war,  he  under- 
took the  difficult  enterprise  of  the  school  at   Eagle- 
wood,  X.  J.,  but  the  military  methods  and  traditions 
of  that  Bchool  were  hardly  congenial  to  him;  and, 
after  a  Bhort   stay  in   Ybnkers,  he  "carried  on  his 
home    Bchool   a    few   years   at   Sutton,  Mass.,  then 


120         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

moved  it  to  Plymouth.  In  fact,  he  was  a  teacher 
from  the  time  he  took  Theodore  Weld's  Eacdewood 

o 

school  at  Perth  Amboy  till  death,  only  combining 
with  it  preaching  for  a  brief  time  at  Yonkers  and 
for  a  longer  time  at  Plymouth."  A  hand  guided  by 
a  gentler,  braver,  and  more  patient  spirit  than  his 
never  laid  down  its  appointed  task  ;  and  the  day  of 
his  burial  was  a  day  of  public  mourning. 

The  death  of  President  Hill,  on  the  21st  of  No- 
vember, 1891,  took  from  us  one  of  the  most  marked 
and  remarkable  men,  if  we  consider  the  special 
qualities  of  his  many-sided  intellect,  that  we  have 
ever  known  among  the  members  of  his  profession. 
It  is  possible  that  his  withdrawal,  of  late  years,  to 
local  activities  and  into  secluded  ways,1  may  have 
made  his  name  less  familiar  among  our  younger 
men  than  it  eminently  deserves  to  be.  His  presence, 
however,  has  been  constantly  and  powerfully  felt 
in  the  field  of  education  :  it  was  fitting  that  the 
flags  were  displayed  at  half-mast  on  the  city  schools 
of  Waltham  the  day  of  his  funeral ;  and  it  is  very 
much  to  be  regretted  that  long  before  the  sum- 
mons of  increasing  years  came  to  him  (for  his  age 
was  still  a  little  under  seventy-four)  his  life  was 
almost  that  of  a  recluse  from  the  wider  companion- 
ship of  his  own  profession.     As  it  was  my  joy  and 

1  He  had  been  for  eighteen  years  minister  in  Portland,  Me., 
having  served  for  fourteen  years  in  Waltham,  Mass.,  till  his  ap- 
pointment as  President  of  Antioch  College,  Ohio,  in  1859,  and 
subsequently  six  years  (1862-68)  as  President  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity. In  1871  he  accompanied  Professor  Agassiz  on  his  voyage  to 
the  Pacific  Coast. 


THOMAS    HILL.  121 

privilege,  many   j  »o,  to  know  him  in  Borne 

relatio  ery  close  intimacy,  and  as  I  have  since 

from  him  mental  instruction  and  stimulus 
me  directions  more  than  from  anj  other  com- 
panion 01  teacher,  I  desire  to  do  what  I  may  in 
these  Pew  memorial  words  to  make  him  a  very  little 
r  than  I  fe  tr  he  is  to  the  memory  or 
the  sympathies  of  many  among  as,  —  who  certainly, 
if  they  had  known  him,  would  have  gained  much 
from  the  extraordinary  wealth  of  hi>  accurate  knowl- 

li is  clear  and  \>  dgment,  and  his 

capacity  of  intellectual  companionship  and  help. 

It  is  nearly 
in  Cambridge,  —  a  sturdy  unpolished  youth  of 
twenty,  of  rustic  training,  dimly  conscious  of  grow- 
ing powers,  "  a  born  Unitarian "  (as  he  said  of  him- 
self), though  brought  up  among  un propitious 
surroundings,  —modestly,  simply,  and  ly  de- 

siring  to   enter   the     Divinity   School.     Wholly   a 
stranger   here,   he  went   Bt  raighl 
perhaps  the  only  man  whose   name   had  a  sound  <>f 
welcome  to  him,   Pi  1    Benry  Ware,  Jr.,  who 

was  not  Long  in  detecting  his  rare  qualities  of  mind, 
and  who  urged  him  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  and 
gain  the  benefit  of  the  entire  college  cours 

Taking  this   encouragement    gladly   and   thank- 
fully, he  was   fortunate  in  spending  a   little  time 
with   Rev.   Rufus   P.  Stebbins,  in    Leominster,  and 
then,  by   his  advice,  something  more  than  a 
as   a   student    in     I.  \     d  •my.   where    his 

faculty  brightened  and  expanded  rapidly  in  the 
landscape  of  those  hold  hills.     Here  he  studii 


122  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

he  afterwards  explained  to  me)  the  lights,  distances, 
and  atmospheric  effects,  as  well  as  the  commoner 
field  of  wild  plants  and  song-birds,1  with  the  same 
curious  precision  which  marked  all  his  observation 
of  nature.  "  His  knowledge  of  all  natural  objects," 
writes  the  Eev.  Samuel  May,  "  was  most  notable 
while  here,  chiefly  of  plants,  etc.,  wherein  even  then 
—  an  apparently  raw,  awkward  youth  —  he  showed 
a  surprising  exactness  of  knowledge.  He  seemed 
to  us  to  know  everything  about  plants  and  flowers  ; 
could  answer  every  question  raised  at  school  or 
elsewhere."  In  college  he  was  easily  the  first  man, 
intellectually,  in  his  class,  which  included  several 
distinguished  names  ;  in  particular,  he  was  chief  in 
a  group  of  three  classmates,  of  rare  mathematical 
talent,  one  of  them  afterwards  his  connection  by 
marriage,  Frederick  Knapp,  with  whom  his  associa- 
tion through  life  was  peculiarly  close  and  tender. 

It  was  in  good  part  by  our  common  acquaintance 
with  this  dear  friend  that  I  came  quite  early  in  his 
college  course  to  know  him  somewhat  nearly  ;  and 
this  led,  a  little  later,  to  a  season  of  close  personal 
intimacy,  which  entitles  me  to  recall  some  traits  of 
his  character  not  (I  think)  very  generally  known. 
I  refer,  in  particular,  to  a  quality  likely  to  be  hidden 
from  most,  not  only  by  the  natural  modesty  and 
self-respect  of  a  self-respecting  man,  but  by  the 
highly   characteristic   intellectual    self-reliance,    or 

1  An  anecdote  told  me  by  Dr.  Hedge  relates  that  he  first  at- 
tracted the  interest  of  the  man  afterwards  most  influential  in  nomi- 
nating him  for  his  post  at  Harvard  by  his  singular  skill  in  imitating 
the  warble  of  one  of  our  native  song-birds. 


TH<»MAS    HILL.  123 

Belf-assertion,  which  accompanied  it.    I  mean,  along 
with  a  vein  of  deep  persona]  i  humility  of 

spirit  equally  profound,  an  almost  morbid  sensitive- 
me  forma  of  moral  evil,  or  peril,  and 
a  keenness —  almost  agony — of  self-reproach,  such 
as  men  of  his  bold  Intellectual  temperament  rarely 
betray.     This  was,  purely  an 

inward  expei i  il:  his  life,  I  am 

certain,  was  as  pure  as  a  child's;  but    his  is  the 
single  example  I   recall,  among  the  companions  of 

>f  thai  desponding 
which  is  ;it   the  heart  of  bo  much  religious  1 
phy,  and   gives    their  vein   of  pathos  to  bo  many 
Christian  hymns.     It    is    rarely,  in    these  daj 
more  balanced  emotion,  that  we  hear  one  seriously 
accuse   himself  of  ing  the  wrath  of  an  Al- 

mighty Judge,  and  the  agony  of  being  cast  into 
outer  darkness  forever,  in  remora  ne  imagi- 

nary guilt.  Yet  why  not  that,  as  well  aa  Borne 
men's  preposterous  claim  of  a  clear  title  to  eel 

This  may  probably  have  been  only  a  passing 
mood  (though  a  genuine  one)  presently  outgrown. 
As   I   think,  it   waa  a   mood  of  that   d  with 

which,  through  life,  he  habitually  thought  upon 
the  Infinite  and  Eternal;  1  might  call  it  a  reflec- 
tion of  that  phase  of  experience  from  the  deep 
background  of  t lie  awakened  Conscience.  And  it 
Beems  not  at  all  unlikely  that  this  was  part  of  the 
same  mental  habit  that  kept  him  from  entering, 
in  later  life,  into  some  of  those  radical  forms  of 
thought   which   have   attracted   most    men   of   his 


124  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

mental  calibre  in  the  present  generation.  The  topics 
which  they  discuss  he  discussed  also,  —  freely,  famil- 
iarly, copiously,  —  but  always  within  what  we  may 
call,  by  comparison,  the  lines  of  the  old  theology. 
Paley's  Horaz  Paulinas,  which  had  his  absolute 
esteem  in  the  days  when  I  knew  him  best,  remained 
(I  think)  to  the  last  his  type  of  the  most  convincing 
treatment  of  the  Christian  evidences ;  and  he 
adhered,  not  blindly  but  with  clear  critical  intelli- 
gence, to  Agassiz's  interpretation  of  the  law  of 
organic  development,  in  opposition  to  anything  that 
might  possibly  be  construed  as  a  quasi-mechanical 
evolution,  under  conditions  of  a  scientific  determin- 
ism. He  was,  it  is  possible,  too  much  a  stranger 
to  the  habit  of  thought  characteristic  of  our  time  ; 
at  any  rate,  his  plea  against  it  lacks  the  force  that 
might  have  been  given  by  accepting  it  first  pro- 
visionally, and  being  (so  to  speak)  baptized  into  the 
spirit  of  it,  till  he  should,  as  has  been  elsewhere 
expressed,  have  "  come  out  on  the  other  side." 
Thus,  as  if  in  a  certain  distrust  of  what  an  un- 
fettered run  of  speculation  might  lead  to  in  a  mind 
of  so  rare  activity  and  self-reliance,  he  kept  himself, 
theologically,  close  moored  to  the  anchorage  and 
held  by  the  fastenings  of  his  earliest  faith.  This, 
it  may  be,  weakened  his  influence  with  a  large  class 
whom  it  was  eminently  to  be  wished  that  his  mind 
might  reach ;  but  doubtless  he  felt  it  to  be  better 
for  his  mental  peace,  while  it  certainly  helped  and 
widened  his  true  work  in  the  larger  community 
outside. 

His  logic,  withal,  in  dealing  with  such  matters, 


THOMAS    HILL.  125 

was  in  some  directions  very  bold  and  radical    Thus 
be  was   bo  positive    in    referring   tbe  operation  of 
natural  laws  to  the  direct  act  of  the  Almighty  thai 
he    would    not    admit    that    <  rod   could   creal 
elastic  Bubstance,  — that   is,  one  which  would 
by  its  own  energy:  the  rebound  was  the  imm< 
push  or  pull  of  a  celestial  will:  u  ry  wavelet 

of  light  or  b  bricated  from 

instant   to  Instant    by   the  Bame  voluntai 
God;  or,  if  you  brought  up  the  I  poisons, 

contagions,  "i-  hereditary  malady,  he  would  reply 
that  God  had  so  bound  himself  by  the  laws  which 
In-  has  made  that  we  by  our  own  act  can  compel 
him  to  exert  bis  power  in  this  or  that  way,  and  in 
no  other.  That  is,  be  would  serenely  accept  this 
result  of  his  logic,  whatever  one  might  suggest  to 
the  contrary.  <>n  the  other  hand,  nothing  could 
be  more  beautiful  and  instructive  than  the  ill 
tions  h<'  was  fond  of  giving,  out  of  the  wealth  <>f  his 
knowledge  of  natural  things,  -as  in  the  an 
ment  of  leaf-buds  on  the  twig  of  a  plant,  or  from 
tip-   laws  stial    mechanics,  —  to  show   with 

what  infinite  forethought  and  skill  the  working  <>ut 
of  all  natural  phenomena  baa  been  pre-arranged  to 
solve,  as  we  may  say,  the  problem  of  the  greatest 
advantage  with  the  Least  expenditure  of  force.  And 
he  liked  to  tell  how  Profess   •  P  who  had  pub- 

lished a  college   text-book  on  "Curves,  Functions, 
and  Forces"  altered  the  title  to  "  Curves,  Functions, 
And  Motions"  recognizing  that   "force"  isa"theo- 
logical  term":  there  is  no  other  Force  but  God. 
h   illustrates  the  eager  and  restless  mental  ac- 


126  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

tivity  already  spoken  of,  that  the  conversation  I 
most  distinctly  recall  in  which  that  mood  of  con- 
trite emotion  asserted  itself  led  directly  (by  what 
channel  I  cannot  call  to  mind)  to  a  discussion  of 
the  elementary  grounds  of  mathematics  and  physics, 
which  beguiled  of  sleep  the  whole  of  a  long  winter 
night,  till  his  accurate  reading  of  the  stars  startled 
us  with  the  warning  that  it  was  near  six  o'clock. 
And  it  shows,  too,  the  tenacity  of  his  mental  habit 
that  long  years  after,  when  suddenly  called  to 
address  a  convention  of  teachers  in  Michigan,  he 
took  up  the  argument  of  this  same  discussion  and 
expanded  it  into  a  scheme,  or  method,  of  general 
intellectual  training  (afterwards  published) ;  giving 
credit,  also,  to  the  circumstances  under  which  it 
had  arisen,  in  the  meditation  of  the  night-watches 
upon  our  bed,  so  that  the  assembly,  in  its  vote  of 
thanks  for  the  lecture,  included  its  gratitude  for 
"Aunt  Harriet's  cup  of  tea,"  whose  potency,  he 
averred,  had  nerved  us  to  the  debate. 

While  I  am  upon  this  point,  I  will  add  that  his 
peculiar  genius  in  mathematics  had  no  more  charac- 
teristic expression  than  in  his  favorite  opinion  —  not 
only  that  the  forms  of  the  universe,  including  in 
them  all  types  of  living  organism,  are  throughout 
the  locioi  mathematical  formulae  known  to  and  con- 
structed by  the  Divine  Mind,  but  that  every  formula 
which  contains  a  mathematical  truth  has  (presum- 
ably) its  actual  realization  in  existing  fact.  He  has 
given  a  very  interesting  exposition  of  this  as  touch- 
ing the  square  root  of  negative  quantities  (the  so- 
called  impossible  or  imaginary  quantities,  involving 


TIlnMAS    HILL.  127 

the   mysl  ictor  ^/—  1  ),  in  a  paper   published 

in  the  tt(  Ihristian  Examiner,"1  showing  how  it  appears 
in  certain  laws  of  reflected  Light.     But  a  still  more 
curious  example   is  Bhown  in  bis   investigation 
as  he  called  it,  "  inventing  "   ol  Curves,  which  I  will 
illustrate  by  an  anec  tiling  upon  him  one 

•  the  President's  office,  1  found  him  enj 
me  few  minutes,  and,  to  while  away  the  time, 
ked  me  to  contemplate  the  following  formula, 
p  =  ar,a  and  see  what  I  could  make  of  it,  —  which 
naturally,  nothing.  Be  then  explained  the 
formula,  showing  bow,  by  assigning  different  arbi- 
trary values  to  a,  a  wonderful  of  curves 
could  be  developed,  some  of  them  extremely  intricate 
and  beautiful.  He  fully  believed  that  the  organic 
world  was  made  up  (so  to  Bpeak)  of  t  i  itions 
of  such  curves,  in  infinite  variety,  from  a  like 
formula  existing  I  it'  1  may  bo  express  myself)  in  the 
mind  of  God.  Andhetold  mehow  Benjamin  Peirce, 
that  prince  of  mathematicians,  in  whom  imagination 
and  reverence  kept  pace  with  all  the  movements  <>f 
hiv  thought,  found  him  once  engaged  in  these  con- 
structions, and,  being  .  ited  by  the  theory, 
brought  in  A  e  ;  and  Agassiz,  his 
being  caught  by  one  of  the  forms, exclaimed,  "Why, 
that  is  the  very  shape  taken  at  one  of  its 
growth  in  the  nerve-cord  of  a  crab  !"  The  explorer 
was  delighted  with  this   continuation  of  so  dear  a 

1  In  March,  l  B58,  article  on  "  Physical  and  ( leleetial  Mechanics." 
-  Here  p  signifies  th<>  radios  <»f  enrvatnre  at  a  iri\<'ii  point,  and 

r  the  distance  of  thai  from  a  given  fixed  point     Thus,  if  p  =  r  (or 

a=l),  tlif  curve  will  be  ■  circle. 


128  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

theory.  And  it  is  possible  that  some  of  my  readers, 
who  remember  President  Hill's  criticism  on  the 
Darwinian  doctrine,  given  at  Springfield  in  1877, 
may  be  interested  in  the  illustration  here  offered  of 
his  way  of  thinking  upon  these  things. 

His  study  of  nature,  too,  was  aided  by  a  faculty 
of  observation  singularly  balanced  and  keen.  He 
once  had  charge  of  a  magnetic  observatory  tempo- 
rarily set  up  in  the  college  yard,  where  I  spent  many 
a  summer  vacation  evening  with  him  ;  and  I  remem- 
ber his  telling  me  that  he  could  in  a  clear  sky  see 
the  satellites  (or  a  satellite)  of  Jupiter  with  his 
naked  eye.  I  have  mentioned  his  precision  of  ear 
for  the  melody  of  song-birds ;  and  with  this  was 
joined  a  theory  that  every  melodious  phrase,  or 
sequence  of  notes,  has  its  precise  meaning  to  the 
thought  interchangeable  with  no  other,  —  as  he  has 
illustrated  in  the  Christian  Examiner 2  by  a  very 
curious  series  of  experiments  made  with  the  aid  of  a 
friend,  whose  musical  organization  was  equally  sen- 
sitive, but  in  a  wholly  different  way.  And  this 
should  dictate  strictly,  he  held,  the  uses  to  which 
any  musical  phrase  might  be  put.  It  was  falsehood 
and  profanation,  for  example,  to  turn  a  tender  oper- 
atic melody,  like  "  Batti,  hatti,"  to  pious  use  as 
"  Smyrna."  "  That  is  not  a  hymn  tune,"  said  his 
respondent  (who  was  perfectly  ignorant  of  music)  : 
"  it  is  the  billing  and  cooing  of  two  lovers,"  —  which 
is,  in  fact,  what  Mozart  meant  it  for.  Under  this 
theory,  he  composed  a  tune  himself,  which  (as  he 
intended  it  should)  carried  back  his  sister's  memory 

1  September,  1855,  in  an  article  on  "  Church  Music." 


THOMAS    HILL.  129 

>me  rural  scene  of  their  childhood,  not  by  any 

nation    of    sounds,   but   by    the  thus 

Bpelled  out  in  the  dialect  of  music. 

With  tin*  same  precision  he  would  turn  his  hand 
to  almosl  any  form  of  manual,  even  artistic  skill, 
sculpture  and  painting  included  ;  and  a  little  I 

•  out    wil  h   Agassiz   upon   their  to  the 

Pacific,  hia  first  word  of  Balutation,  when  I  went  t«» 

ood-by,  was  to  bid  me  take  a  posture  for  the 
photographic  apparatus  he  had  set  up  for  ] 
his  barn  al  Waltham.  Still  more  interesting  is  the 
story  of  his  "  Occulta  tor.1  D  icussing  with  P 
Peirce  the  very  intricate  problem  to  pure  mathe- 
matics) of  the  moon's  patb  among  the  stars,  he  bad 
maintained  that   this  could  b  -!it«-<l  by  me- 

chanical apparatus  a<  curately  enough  to  be 
in  the  calculation  of  eclipses,  determinations  of  time, 
and   thereby   the   fixing    i  I  positions. 

The  professor,  knowing  his  mechanical  aptn 
it  him  as  a  task  to  put   the  mechanism  of  it   into 
shape.     This  lay  in  his  mind  for  two  or  three  v< 
without   his   giving   much   thought    to   it.  till  one 
morning,  waking  at  four  o'clock,  he  decided  to  invent 
it  then  and  there;  and  did   it  bo  effectively  that  a 
couple  of  hours  later,  on   getting   up,  he  whittled  a 
model  of  his  "  Occultator  "  out  ofa  shingle,  ace  ui 
enough  to  give  the  time  within  <l  think)  abouf  a 
minute.     Some  years  after,  wishing  to  give  a  young 
student  the   means  of  some  vacation   earnings,  he 
perfected  the   instrument,  which   was  used 
advantage    in    hundreds  of   observations    made  by 
direction  of  the  "Nautical  Almanac"  for  surveys 

9 


130  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

in  the  Western  Territories,  which  would,  it  was 
said,  have  been  quite  impracticable  —  at  any  rate, 
quite  too  costly  —  without  this  mechanical  aid. 

He  was,  withal,  keenly  sensible  at  times  of  one 
mental  lack,  —  the  gift  of  clear,  fluent,  and  effective 
literary  expression.  These  things  go  by  comparison, 
and  it  is  not  likely  that  the  readers  of  his  well- 
reasoned,  plain,  and  instructive  papers  ever  thought 
of  the  lack.  But  sometimes  the  indescribable  quality 
we  call  style  is  the  only  thing  needed  to  the  wide 
and  brilliant  reputation  which  by  every  other  quality 
one  seems  sure  of  attaining.  He  probably  under- 
rated the  merits  of  his  own  literary  art,  —  though  it 
is  certain  that  we  have  rarely  known  a  cultivated 
man  in  whom  mere  skill  of  expression  bore  so  low  a 
ratio  to  the  general  mass  of  mental  power.  Still, 
he  was  a  scholar  of  no  mean  accomplishment  in 
purely  literary  fields.  Many  of  his  brief  poems 
have  original  melody,  as  well  as  fancy  ;  he  delighted 
in  reproduction  of  the  ancient  lyric  measures  in 
sufficiently  melodious  English  ;  and  he  was  confident 
(as  he  told  me  once)  that,  if  he  chose  to  give  his 
mind  to  it,  he  could  translate  the  great  chorus  of 
the  Agamemnon  line  for  line  and  accent  for  accent,  — 
in  which  feat  he  would  probably  have  shown  (as 
Lowell  said  of  Browning)  that  "  the  study  of  Greek 
had  taught  him  a  language  far  more  difficult  than 
Greek."  I  speak  of  it  here  only  as  an  illustration 
of  the  curious  versatility  and  self-confidence  which 
accompanied  his  great  mental  gifts. 

In  this  slight  sketch,  mostly  made  up  from  mem- 
ories more  than  forty  years  away,  I  have  attempted 


THOMAS    HILL.  131 

to  give  a  hint  of  those  qualities  in  which  he  was 
indivi  ;,  and  different  from  any  other  whom 

I  have  equally  well  known.     And  I  cannot  «■ 
too  strongly  the  impression  that   in   general  wealth 
of   understanding,  in    clear,    precise,   and  classified 
knowledge  of  natural  beta  in  the  variety  of 

fields,  with  power  both  to  grasp  them  as  a  whole 
and  to  group  them  in  intricate,  subtile,  and  instruo- 
sombinations,  I  have  not  known  any  that  could 
be  fairly  called  his  equal:  our  friend  Oalthrop,  of 
Syracuse,  is  the  only  one  1     in  easily  compare  with 

him  ;   and  in  him  this  quality  i-  joined  with  an  • 

and  buoyant  temper,  a  hearty  alliance  with  tin; 
spirit  of  the  latest  science,  and  a  faculty  of  brilliant 
exposition,  ot  improvisation,  which  make  him  <>nr 
nterpreter  on  many  of  the  same  lines  of  thought 
with  th<><«-  I  have  here  dwell  upon. 

But  I  cannot  refrain   from  adding  : 
cially  characteristic  "t*  President  Bill,  the  supreme 
value  which  he  Bel  upon  /"'  ■•  i-  the 

groundwork  <>f  mental  training,  as  well  as  the 
surest  guid  •  to  the  interpretation  of  the  material 
universe.  1  have  heard  him  tell  how  the 
pupil  visibly  brightened  from  month  t<>  month,  and 
the  intelligence  ripened,  under  the  tine  tonic  of  this 
mental  discipline, — an  experiment  the  more  inter- 
esting t<>  in-',  sine-  it  was  told  me  t*>  encoui 
parallel  experiment  I  was  just  then  making,  which 
had  a  similar  result  But  these  words  are  not  meant 
for  biography  or  eulogy,  only  t<>  bring  freshly  into 
memory  some  traits  of  one  of  our  men  worthiesl  to 
be  remembered. 


132         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

Died  in  Madison,  Wisconsin,  December  the  ninth, 
1889,  William  Francis  Allen,  Professor  of  History 
in  the  State  University,  at  the  age  of  fifty-nine. 

When  a  child,  I  do  not  suppose  that  any  one 
ever  thought  of  my  brother  as  precocious,  though 
(as  it  usually  does)  the  scholar's  vocation  clearly 
showed  itself  in  him  as  early  as  five  or  six.  In 
fact,  his  intellectual  maturity  was  of  slow  growth, 
and  he  was  twenty-six  when  he  took  his  first  per- 
manent position,  as  classical  instructor  in  a  private 
school.  His  boyhood  would  have  been  described, 
though  sufficiently  athletic  and  vigorous,  as  grave 
and  gentle  rather  than  robust ;  and  he  would  be 
remembered  as  one  whose  candid  soul  repelled  evil 
(to  copy  Goethe's  phrase)  as  a  duck's  back  sheds 
water,  —  while  those  inevitable  touches  leave  with 
most  of  us  a  stain  that  seems,  it  may  be,  only  skin- 
deep,  but  costs  the  pain  of  half  a  lifetime  before 
they  are  quite  washed  out.  But  he  certainly 
lacked  neither  vigor  nor  cheer :  his  interest  in  the 
people  and  affairs  of  his  native  town  was  healthy 
and  keen ;  and  afterwards,  in  Gb'ttingen,  he  de- 
lighted his  companions  by  throwing  in  fair  wrestle 
(which  he  had  .learned  on  the  village  green)  an 
English  visitor  rejoicing  in  his  strength,  who  had 
ventured  to  jeer  at  the  lack  of  manly  sports  in  our 
Yankee  schools.  He  was,  for  that  day,  rather  late 
in  college,  graduating  at  twenty-one,  above  medium 
rank,  but  not  among  the  first.  But  he  was  not 
personally  ambitious,  and  he  had  a  noble  and  dis- 
tinguished group  of  classmates,  among  whom  the 
intimacy  through  life  has  been  uncommonly  strong, 


WILLIAM    FRANCIS    ALLEN. 

rod  tenacious.      I 
more  deeply  indebted,  ur  in  more  wi 
companionship. 

A  lift*  of  thre<  i   leaving  coUegi 

private  tutor   in  a    New  fork  family  in- 

nce  and  refinement,  added  a  pfa  tperi- 

ence  which  in  the  Large  variety  of  posts  he  has 
since  filled  proved  ol  the   country- 

bre  1   youth.      A    oat  aral  diffidem 
(so  to  Bpeak)  in  that  unobtruding  Buavity  of  manner 
which  remained  characteristic  of  him.     In  pai 
lar,  however,  it    .  le  in  giving  him  the 

leisure  —  from   lack   of   which    man}  suffer 

through  our  lives  —for  weighing  wit!  lelib- 

eratioa  his  convictious,  purposes,  ami  capacitii 
as  t<»  lay  out   clearly  his  plan   of   In        II. 

choice  would  have  1 n  the  Btudy  of  theology  and 

the  Christian  mini-try;  hut  the  theological  temper 
was  less  tolerant  among  as  then  than  now,  li 
ism  was  still  weathering  the  raw  air  -a'  controvi 
ami  he  gave  ap  tin-  thought,  reluctantly,  —  partly, 
perhaps,  because  he  doubted   his  aptitude  for  the 
hardiness  of  public  Bpeech,  hut  chiefly  because  his 

honest    thought     was    tOO    •'radical"    t'»    suit     that 

temper  which  he  would  neither  conciliate  noi 

sail.     He  had,  as  I  remember,  serious  thoughts  of 

tin-  law,  which  shaped  his  reading  for  a  time;  hut 

he  had  neither  the  forensic  temper  nor  the  vigor  of 

lit  (slightly  impaired  by  illness  in  childhood) 

to  justify  in  his  own  view  his  choice  of  that  ardu- 
ous profession.  And  it  was  distinctly  with  tin1 
feeling   that  he  accepted   something   less  than  his 


134  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

first  or  perhaps  his  second  choice,  that  he  told  me 
his  decision  to  make  a  vocation  of  classical  and 
historical  study,  which,  he  modestly  thought,  might 
make  a  useful  and  a  needed  service. 

Having  made  this  election,  he  spent  two  years  as 
a  student  in  Europe,  finding  there  some  of  the 
most  eminent  of  instructors,  —  among  them  the 
scholar  historian  Mommsen,  —  and  including  in 
his  field  of  study  Germany,  Italy,  and  Greece. 
There,  too,  the  great  privilege  attended  him,  of  the 
best  and  nearest  of  mental  companionship,  not  only 
of  those  who  were  his  fellow-students  here,  but  of 
some  (as  of  two  friends  whom  he  visited  afterward 
in  Basel  and  in  Ghent)  who  have  placed  themselves 
in  the  very  first  rank  as  authorities  in  their  own 
field.  In  these  pleasant  student  days  there  oc- 
curred, too,  a  curious  evidence  of  his  happy  gift  to 
win  the  confidence  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men ;  for  once,  when  by  a  break  of  correspond- 
ence I  had  failed  of  an  appointment  with  him  at 
Martigny,  and  had  passed  by  on  the  other  side,  he 
not  only  was  forced  to  leave  his  hotel  bill  unpaid, 
but,  by  a  miracle  of  mutual  assurance  which  aston- 
ishes me  to  this  day,  borrowed  money  of  his  Swiss 
landlord,  and  went  cheerily  on,  to  complete  his 
journey.  Kome  and  Athens  were  not  so  familiar 
ground  to  scholars  then  as  now  ;  and  the  opportun- 
ity of  them  both,  with  the  delightful  companionship 
of  his  classmate  Professor  Goodwin,  gave  him  an 
advantage  which  he  always  felt,  in  the  particular 
task  he  had  set  himself,  —  the  interpretation  of 
antiquity  into  life. 


WILLIAM    FRANCIS    ALLEN.  135 

Hia  course  Bince  has  been  publicly  and  suffi- 
ciently told:  the  course,  mainly,  of  a  patient  and 
Bucce  cheT  for  three-and-thirt}  with 

the  break  of  two  years'  -  with   the  Sanitary 

Commission  during  the  War,  and  with  the  inci- 
dental tasks  of  editorship  and  literary  criticism. 
Engaged  in  Buch  tasks,  he  may  almost  be  Baid  t<» 
have   died,   like   bo    man.  scholars,   pen   In 

hand;  Bince,  only  a  few  hours  before  his  last  Bleep, 
he  dictated  with  great  precision  certain  changes  to  be 
made  in  the  final  proof  of  a  work  then  going  thi 
the  pre         I  'or  he  had  Bet  bis  heart  Btrongly, 
before,  on  accomplishing  two  Bcholarly  tasks,  —  a 
student's  edition  of  the  Anna!  bus,  an  author 

and  work  that  especially  attracted  him,  ihool 

History  of  Rome,  in   which   he  gathei  com- 

pactly, and  Beta  forth  with  Bingulai  »,  the 

results  of  intelligent  Btudy  begun  under  Mommsen 
thirty-five  years  before,  and  never  lost  sight  of  since 
as  his  most  important  single  task. 

For  Beveral  years  he  had  been  the  Benior  and  the 
most  trusted  officer  of  his  own  university,  and  con- 
sequently most  Look  •'!  to  for  outside  work  I  ' 
what  that  outside  work  meant  to  him,  I  venture 
to  give  the  following  hint,  copied  from  a  letter 
written  a  few  days  before  his  death:  — 

UI  have  been  unusually  busy  this  fall  with  two 
t  proof-sheeta  in  addition  to  my  regular  work, 
and  my  duties  as  church  trustee,  director  of  the  Free 
Library,  curator  of  the  Hist  :.-..  8  iety,  president 
of  the  Academy,  and  superintendent  of  the  Sunday- 
school.       Then,    besides,   I    found    there   was    nobody 


136         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

just  at  this  juncture  who  could  be  president  of  the 
Benevolent  Society  except  myself.  Affairs  were  in 
a  delicate  and  somewhat  critical  stage,  the  process  of 
transformation  from  a  committee  of  our  church  to  a 
general  charity  having  been  practically,  but  not  com- 
pletely, accomplished.  It  seemed  that  there  was  no 
one  who  could  conduct  the  last  stages  of  this  process 
(or  so  they  said)  excepting  me  ;  so  I  took  the  place 
rather  than  see  any  failure  in  the  work.  I  had  to 
appoint  a  lot  of  committees  from  all  the  churches, 
and  got  it  successfully  done,  —  every  church  being 
now  well  represented,  and  the  society  in  good  run- 
ning order.  To  add  to  this,  I  was  appointed  on  the 
Faculty  committee  to  investigate  the  hazing  disturb- 
ance, and  this  has  taken  a  great  deal  of  time  [some- 
times as  many  as  three  meetings  in  a  day,  and  once, 
the  whole  of  Saturday].  Fortunately,  all  these  jobs 
are  coming  to  an  end." 

It  was,  indeed,  on  coming  home  from  the  last 
of  these  meetings,  that  he  lay  down  utterly  wearied, 
—  as  it  proved,  with  symptoms  of  a  return  of  pneu- 
monia, from  which  he  partly  rallied,  but  only  to 
pass  away  gently,  a  few  days  later,  as  it  were  in 
sleep,  without  a  sigh  or  pang.  I  will  copy,  too, 
these  words  received  from  Madison,  written  three 
days  after  his  burial :  — 

"I  suppose  without  coming  out  here  one  could  not 
imagine  the  feeling  towards  him,  and  if  any  expres- 
sions should  seem  superlative,  you  may  be  sure  they 
are  not  the  slightest  exaggeration.  His  special  re- 
finement and  courtesy  to  every  one  has  made  a  most 
deep  impression  among  these  western  people.  From 
the  President  and  all  the  leading  men  down  to  the 


JCUEL    LOl  >W.  V*  . 

poor  German  woman  who  brought  her  three  little 
children  to  Bay  she  w;is  going  to  take  them  up  to  the 
funeral,  all  seem  to  have  idolized  him." 

I  give  these  words  not  merely  as  testimony  of 
the  persona]  traits  that  have  Left  a  memory  widely 
beloved,  but  to  add  what  was  equally  characteris- 
tic,—  that  with  this  Buavity  of  manner  was  joined 
a  judgment  true  I  and   hard  as  flint  on  all 

matters   of   politi  bhical  concern;   and  that, 

with  all  his  devotion  to  constructs  >us  work, 

[ally  in    his   lab  i  he  never   forgot    his 

early  experience,  but    remained  just    as  inflexibly, 
almost  resentfully,  opposed  to  anything  that  seemed, 
ever  so  remotely,  to  narrow  the  Christian  nan 
fellowship. 

Samuel  Longfellow,  again,  is  best  known  to  the 
present  generation  as  a  leader  in  the  front  line  of 
religious  radicalism.  He  even  d  carded  in  th<- 
later  edition  of  his  "hymns"  those  tender  lines 
composed  by  his  brother  for  his  own  induction 
to  the  preacher's  office,  beginning 

M  Christ  to  the  young  man  laid," 

because  he  would  not,  by  that  one  name,  disturb 
the  simplicity  of  his  faith  in  the  one  Source  of  the 
Boul'a  higher  Ufa  And  yet,  for  some  time  after  he 
left  the  Divinity  School  in  1845,  he  still  held,  in 
the  devoutest  Bpirit,  what  would  now  be  called 
a  very  conservative  form  of  Unitarian  theology. 
Among  his  later  essays  and  addres 
reflecting   upon   phases   in   the   political   or  social 


138         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

conflict  of  their  day,  strong  with  ethical  heat  and 
the  eloquence  of  an  indignant  conscience ;  yet, 
almost  to  the  years  of  full  intellectual  maturity,  one 
would  have  said  that  his  temper  was  that  of  a 
somewhat  dreamy  piety,  and  a  poetic  optimism 
abhorrent  of  all  revolutionary  strife.  His  con- 
victions of  truth  and  righteousness  were  spoken  in 
a  tone  that  lacked  nothing  to  be  sturdy  and  robust ; 
while  his  physical  constitution,  though  no  way  de- 
void of  a  healthy  vigor,  seems  especially  to  have 
craved  "  seasons  of  retreat "  oftener  than  can  com- 
monly fall  to  the  man  of  a  busy  profession  in  our 
day.  The  mountains,  the  seaside,  the  Azores,  a 
series  of  long  holidays  in  Europe  or  elsewhere,  all 
went  to  the  repose  and  ripening  of  his  mind  ;  to 
say  nothing  of  the  rare  privilege,  as  it  proved,  that 
less  than  fifteen  years  of  settled  ministry,  all  told, 
were  unevenly  divided  among  three  congregations 
so  different,  yet  each  in  its  way  so  helpful,  as  those 
in  Fall  River,  in  Brooklyn,  and  in  German  town. 
His  "  Lords  of  Life  "  seem  to  have  known  that  he 
needed  a  widely  varied  and  a  somewhat  delicate 
training. 

In  respect  to  the  quality  of  his  religious  discourse, 
we  may  call  it  a  very  pure  and  single-hearted  pre- 
sentment of  the  "  Transcendental  "  faith,  in  its  more 
positive  and  masculine  type,  as  it  was  evolved  under 
the  pressure  of  the  controversies  that,  in  their 
gravest  but  gentlest  form,  made  part  of  his  life  in 
its  shaping  period.  His  expression  of  that  faith 
is  singularly  free  from  any  intrusion  of  a  spirit 
properly  critical :  it  is  little,  if  at  all,  modified  by 


BAMUKL   LONGFELLOW. 

Ita  of  historical  or  economic    study.     He 
seems  cover  to  have  felt  the  pressure  of  that  e 
tific  drift,  by  Borne  called  "positivist  "  and  by  some 
"agnostic,"   which   has   bo   powerfully   moulded   a 
later  mood  of  thinking;  he  seems   n  en  to 

been  Beriously  tried  by  the  logical  conflict 
between  his  own  buoyant  optimism  and  those 
wrongs  in  political  or  Bocial  lif'-  against  which  his 
ethical  judgment  was  bo  Bternly  □  A  hap- 

pier  mental  temperament  it  would   be  difficult  t«» 
imagine,  in  carrying  on  the  actual  ta-k  it  ., 
him  to  do,  particularly  in  administering  those  offices 
of  consolation  and  cheer  which  mad*'  a  frequent  and 
a  most  blessed  portion  <»f  it. 
The  first  impression  one  m  his  published 

-    and    discoui  .    perhaps,   that    of    a    t"<, 

predominating  gravity.  We  miss  the  play  "f  fancy 
we  might  have  looked  for,  and  welcome  as  relief  tin' 
rare  though  felicitous  illustration  from  travel  or 
works  of  art  The  tone  of  their  plea  for  religious 
idealism  and  an  exalted  ethics  we  might  almost  call 
a  monotone.     Prom  first  t<»  list  they  copy 

his  own  phrase)  an  "appeal"  in  behalf  "f  those 
phases  in  the  higher  life,  and  of  the  realities  they 
assume  in  the  spiritual  Bphere,  which  it  was  Ids 
particular  mission  t<>  set  forth.  To  Bet  against  this 
sustained  and  even  elevation,  we  needed  the 
abundant  selections  given  in  the  "Memoir"  from 
hi<   corresponden  dally   that    with    Samuel 

Johnson,  his  neai  ad   of  forty  1 1  re 

We  find  the  brighter,  kindlier,  ami  more  playful 
meeds  <»f  mind  which  we  knew  t<>  he  equally  native 


140         SOME  YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

in  him.  In  these  the  tone  and  phrase  are  often 
what  we  might  call  boyish.  This  temper  happily 
continued  with  him  to  the  last,  and  was  in  happy 
keeping  with  what  was  perhaps  his  most  unique 
and  characteristic  gift,  —  his  rare  sympathy  with 
boys,  even  rude  and  naughty  boys,  which  gave  him 
a  joy  in  their  company,  and  a  moral  hold  upon 
them  such  that  we  cannot  easily  recall  a  parallel. 
When  some  dear  little  girls  asked  him  once  why 
he  was  not  quite  so  kind  to  them,  his  answer 
was,  "Perhaps  because  I  never  was  a  little  girl 
myself !  " 

The  name  of  Edmund  Burke  Willson,  if  not  so 
widely  known  as  it  deserves,  brings  with  it  associa- 
tions of  a  singular  modesty,  purity,  and  manliness 
that  have  endeared  it  to  a  wide  company  of  friends. 

I  first  met  Mr.  Willson  when  we  entered  the 
Divinity  School  together  in  the  summer  of  1840  ; 
and  while  years  have  done  much  to  color,  warm, 
and  deepen  the  first  impression,  they  have  done 
nothing,  I  think,  to  alter  it.  Candor,  modesty,  and 
clear  intelligence  were  traits  as  plainly  written 
then  on  that  winning  face  of  his,  as  we  have  read 
them  there  in  all  the  years  since.  Some  circum- 
stances brought  us  especially  near  together,  — 
though  not,  perhaps,  in  the  very  confidential  in- 
timacy that  generally  comes  to  one  as  a  sort  of 
surprise.  In  age  we  were  only  six  days  apart :  he 
was  by  so  much  the  elder.  And  our  fathers  were 
country  ministers,  somewhat  widely  separated  in 
the   same  county,  each  having  a  share,  not  very 


EDMUND   BUBKE   WD  141 

unlike,  in   the  libera]  religion  their 

day.     In  8om(  he   had  the  advantage  of  a 

maturity  of  ch  and  thi 

perhaj  red   by   training  in  a  rural  academy, 

which   in   Borne  points  may  compare  to  advantage 
with  the  hothouse  culture  Borne  immature  natures 
undergo   in  college  til        A  ain,  while  he  * 
Beemingly  vigorous  health  and  of  mpanion- 

able  temper,  he  lacked  something  of  the  phj 
hardihood   and  robust]  mmon  at  that  ] 

of  life.  At  least,  I  do  aot  remember  that  either  in 
long  walks,  rough  fun,  <»r  athl<  rts  he  showed 

the  energy  ol  I  his  companions.     If  it  were 

so,  it  may  possil  ly  have  been  due  to  Borne  del 
of  organization,  Buch   a-  we  easily  i  w it li 

moral  purity  like  his,  though  we  might  uot  suspect 

it  in  a  young  man  of  hi-  ordhl  tllent  health. 

An  incident  of  this  time  may  an  indie 

of  what  1  mean.  One  morning  he  came  into  my 
room  Buffering  from  a  Bwollen  eyelid,  caused  by  a 
blow  or  a  Bting,-  I  forget  which  ;  ami.  touching  it 
lightly  t<>  describe  the  swelling, he  fainted  instantly 
away.  Thi-  did  not  appear  t"  b  •  due  t<»  any  Budden 
or  acute  shock  of  pain  ;  ami  it  seemed  t<>  reveal  a 
degree  of  uervoua  susceptibility  that,  perhaps,  made 
a  part  of  his  physic   1  OT  even  moral  temperament. 

On  tin*  other  hand,  when  I  think  of  him  in  the 
little  group  of  eight,  which  included  two  men  of 
such  very  marked  and  diverse  quality  of  geniu 
Charles  Henry  Brigham  and  John  W  LS8,  it  is 
most  interesting  to  remember  how,  with  his  rare 
modesty,  candor,   and   constitutional    self-distrust, 


142  SOME   YOUNGER  MEMORIES. 

he  always  held  his  own  steadily  at  all  points ;  so 
that  there  was  probably  not  one  in  the  class  who 
so  uniformly  kept  the  moral  confidence  and  intel- 
lectual respect  of  us  all.  As  a  student  he  was 
patient,  faithful,  and  diligent,  —  especially  faithful, 
1  should  say,  in  what  might  seem  the  dryer  and 
more  formal  tasks  of  study,  rather  than  enthusiastic 
or  brilliant  in  any  one  line.  On  his  feet  in  actual 
debate  (a  severe  test  to  most  men  of  that  age)  he 
was  what  we  have  always  known  him  who  have 
heard  him,  too  infrequently,  in  later  years,  —  cool, 
easy,  self-possessed,  never  in  the  least  confused  in 
argument,  clear  in  statement,  with  a  quiet  decision 
of  speech  that  counts  as  a  far  greater  force  than 
emotional  rhetoric  or  boisterous  declamation.  In 
literary  taste  I  doubt  whether  refined  fancy,  splen- 
dor of  imagination,  or  intellectual  depth  ever 
weighed  as  much  with  him  as  what  came  nearer 
home  to  his  grave  but  genial  and  sunny  temper. 
One  might  envy  him  the  hours  of  innocent  fun 
he  found  in  "  Pickwick,"  a  new  book  then ;  while 
some  of  us  were  victims  rather  to  the  sentimental- 
isms  of  "  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop."  And  I  do  not 
think  that  he  was  ever  drawn  (as  most  of  us  were, 
sooner  or  later)  into  the  transcendental  vortices  of 
"  Sartor  Eesartus." 

One  would  not  do  justice  to  the  rare  intellectual 
quality  which  has  been  recognized  in  Mr.  Willson 
through  his  more  than  fifty  years  of  uninterrupted 
public  service,  —  eight  in  Grafton,  seven  in  West 
Eoxbury,  and  thirty-six  in  Salem,  including  a  brief 
episode  as  chaplain  in  the  War, —  without  knowing 


MUND    BURKE   w: 

something  of  his  still  rarer  humility  of  spirit,  and 
tin;  d  Listrust  that  saddened  some  of  his  more 

confidential  communications.  Bis  mental  tempera- 
ment was  sound  rather  than  robust,  and  he  was  not 
.  persuaded  of  the  real  strength  which  was  his 
to  put  forth  if  he  would.  Devout  by  habit  and  con- 
viction, he  felt  more  keenly  than  most  men  some  of 
t  In-  changing  phases  of  belief  that  we  ha  v.-  witm 
during  those  fifty  touched  moments 

and  moods  of  his  personal  experience.  That  his 
own  faith  remained  what  it  was, ^ calm,  Btrong, 
even  radiant,  —  through  all  the  a  here  implied, 

lay  not  bo  much  in  any  positive  or  ve  quality 

of  his  thought,  but  rather  in  an  unusually  clear, 
firm,  serene,  and  steadfast  reliance  on  moral  princi- 
ple, chastened  (as  I  think  )  by  an  unusually  humble 
as  well  as  sincere  and  Living  pit  -  candid 

of  si. ul,  which  all  men  Baw  in   him,  was  the 
root  of  his  great  and  real  strength. 

Willingly  as  he  >rth  thai  I  h  in  the 

ted  lines  of  duty,  and  readily  as  he  assumed 
any  responsibility  which  this  might  enjoin,  il 
hard  to  persuade  him,  sometimes,  to  Btretch  out  his 
hand  for  a  success  or  an  influence  outside  that  well- 
defined  range,  which  yet  might  seem  easily  within 
his  reach.  To  Bay  that  he  lacked  courage  or  ambi- 
tion might  oot  be  quit  ;  but  there  was,  what 
many  might  fail  t"  BUflpect,  a  hidden  root  of 
distrust  The  courage  he  Bhowed  at  an  emergency 
iheer  moral  courage,  though  carrying  with  it  a 
fine  intellectual  capacity,  winch  he  was  too  slow  to 
admit.      I    never   knew,    for   example,  what    he   was 


144  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

capable  of  in  the  way  of  forceful  literaiy  expression 
till  I  read  a  sermon  of  his  on  "  Bad  Friday,"  preached 
after  the  surrender  of  Burns  in  1854;  when  I  wrote 
to  him  at  once  to  persuade  him  (as  I  hoped)  to  more 
effort  in  that  direction,  —  purely  in  regard  of  the 
fine,  clear,  manly  eloquence  of  style  in  which  he  had 
shown  himself  a  master.  Another  instance  was  on 
one  of  the  very  few  occasions  when  he  stood  in  a 
post  of  special  interest  or  dignity  in  his  own  pro- 
fession, addressing  the  "  Berry  Street  Conference  "  in 
a  discourse  of  "  reminiscences  "  of  rare  beauty  and 
instruction,  —  a  discourse  which,  I  think,  was  never 
given  to  the  wider  public.  Again,  the  one  literary 
opportunity  of  his  life  seemed  to  come  to  him  when 
our  classmate  Charles  Brigham  left  him,  with  Dr. 
A.  A.  Livermore,  in  charge  of  a  copious  mass  of 
papers,  the  labor  of  a  busy  lifetime,  with  an  under- 
standing that  some  sort  of  a  memorial  volume  would 
be  published.  He  consulted  me  —  naturally,  since 
I  had  just  been  following  up  Mr.  Brigham's  lines  of 
work  in  Ann  Arbor  —  as  to  his  own  share  in  the 
joint  task,  which  was  the  biographical,  sending  me, 
among  other  papers,  a  very  unique,  curious,  and 
detailed  diary,  in  which  our  friend  had  written  out 
in  private  hours  the  story  of  his  early  life,  —  espe- 
cially his  Divinity  School  years,  with  incidents, 
confessions,  and  resolutions,  such  as  to  throw  a  very 
interesting  light  on  his  real  experience.  This  rich 
and  too  abundant  material  seemed  to  overpower  Mr. 
"YVillson's  modest  estimate  of  his  own  ability  to  cope 
with  it.  I  vainly  urged  the  lines  on  which  I  thought 
what  was  valuable  in  it  might  be  preserved  ;  and,  to 


EDMUND    BURKE   WE  145 

my  •_•  it,  a  form  and  scale  of  memorial  were 

determined  on  —  as   I   suppose,  by  judgment  of  the 
publishers  —  which  shrank  the  proposed  biography 
scanty  and  pallid  out  I  ppointing 

to  those  who  knew  something  already  of  it 
ami   wholly  inadequate    to    portray  that   vigorous, 

what 
wayward  intellectual  manhood 
required  oot  a  Less  delicate  and  discrimhi 
something  of  a  bolder,  hand. 

Further,  with  hi  ind  cour- 

age, and  his  singularly  clear,  common  nvic- 

tion  "ii  points  of  practical  judgment,  Mr.  Willson 
was  diffident  of  urging  his  own  opinl  *1  the 

opposing   view  of  his   associate    .11  red  t<» 

accept  their  decision,  but  himself  I  from  the 

field.     Such,  at  least,  was  the  account  I  tome 

of  his  partial  inaction,  in  latei  in  mattei 

denominational  policy  as  t<»  which  li«'  might  be  Bup- 
i  to  carry  weight  Where,  i  d  I  be  other  hand, 
tlic  question  turned  on  points  of  principle  rather 
than  practice,  there  was  no  man  whose  word 
placid,  firm,  generous,  serene  -was  more  readily 
given,  or  was  listened  to  with  more  uniform,  i 
donate,  and  venerating  delight  by  his  younger  breth- 
ren, of  whom  I  was  always  glad  to  count  as  one. 
No  one  who  knew  him  but  -1  him  worthy  "f 

the  highest   conventional  honors  of  his  \  i 
ami  probably  anticipated  them  for  him.     It'  th< 
one  thing  we  could  regret  in  Bucb  a  life,  it  is  that  its 
entire  strength   was  not   put  forth   in    some   more 
widely  conspicuous  field     But  this  is  also  its  best 

10 


146  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

praise  and  truest  victory,  —  that  that  entire  strength 
was  given,  with  perfect  fidelity  and  without  any 
stint,  to  the  particular  work  he  had  chosen  ;  while 
its  highest  reward  was  found  in  the  loving  appre- 
ciation and  perfect  confidence  of  those  whom  he 
served  in  it. 

With  Octavins  Frothingham's  death  passed  away 
the  most  brilliant  and  interesting  figure  —  except- 
ing one  —  of  those  who  were  the  younger  liberal 
leaders  of  the  last  generation.  His  services  to  our 
common  life  of  thought  were  so  many,  and  his  con- 
tribution to  it  was  so  rich,  that  it  is  not  easy  at 
first  glance  to  fix  upon  a  point  of  view  for  seeing 
it  as  a  whole.  Happily,  he  has  given  us  the  hint 
of  what  we  seek  in  the  title  of  the  hymn  written 
for  his  graduation  from  the  Divinity  School,  —  that 
by  which  most  of  us,  it  is  likely,  know  him  best : 
"  The  Soldiers  of  the  Cross."  This  militant  phrase 
strikes  the  key-note  which  seems  most  readily  to 
bring  that  instrument  of  many  strings  into  clear 
harmony.  The  invocation  it  addresses  to  the  Al- 
mighty is  that  valiant  Hebrew  one,  "  Thou  Lord  of 
Hosts."  The  hymn  itself  is  the  very  finest  idealized 
conception  of  the  holy  war  that  summons  the  faith- 
ful and  brave.  Its  imagery  is  of  the  arming,  the 
vigil,  and  the  vow  of  a  young  knight,  to  whom  the 
crusade  he  embarks  in  is  a  glorious  thing,  for 
the  joy  of  conflict  it  offers,  no  less  than  for  the 
nobility  of  the  cause  it  fights  for.  And,  then,  the 
proud  humility  of  the  knightly  temper!  for,  with 
all  his  militant  quality,  no  one  ever  saw  or  listened 


vvirs   BROOKS   ntOTHINGHAJL  14, 

to  oni  friend  without  being  chiefly  Impressed  by  the 
knight,  not  the  mere  soldier,  that  was  in  him, — 
the  c  >w,  the  sweetness 

and  court  tan. 

In  his  eight  it  Salem,  we  who  knew  him 

at  a  little  distance  thought  of  him,  p  i 

tally   fitted    for  the   thoughtful,   refined,  and 
cultivated  companionship   which  found 

—  by  a  st ran .  -in  little  provincial  «•;*]►£- 

tala,  where  life  b  grown  mellow,  and  ifl 

even,  it  may  be, slightly  touched  in 
It  i-  probable,  however,  that  these  were  oot  merely 
years  of    preparation    for   the   wider,  noisier  Held, 
but  that  just  then  bis  mind  mon 
study    than     many    companions    in    liis    thought. 
Among  his  clear-cut  recollections  who  was 

tin-  best  of  companions,  John  W  ks  <-f 

that    goodly  fellowship  known  t«>  tin'  initiated  of 

that    day  as  |  ':.•■      1 1      k    and    I.  -  an    ass 

tion  <»f  something  less  than  twenty,  which  included 
such   name-   as    Dr.  II  9    irr    hang,  William    B, 

Greene,  t  !hai  les  T.  Bi  in   Ware,  CI    rles  H. 

Brigham,  Thomas  T.  Stone,  Dexter  Clap] 

W.   BriggS,    Nathaniel    Hall,  John    Merrick,    and    (I 

think)  David   A.  Wasson,  of  whom  only  t In • 
main.     lhu.  if  I   can  trust  my  memory  here,  what 
he  appeared  to  Beek  in  it  i  [uaintance 

rather  than  discussion  of  opinion.  It  is  as  a  cheery 
and  bright  pn  •  I  i  all  him,  as  one  who  seems 
in  the  retrospect   during  thoa  held 

his  forces  in  reserve 

It  had  something,  accordingly,  like   the  rii. 


148  SOME    YOUNGER    MEMORIES. 

a  declaration  of  independence,  or  the  manifesto 
of  a  fresli  career,  when  we  heard  that  the  wave  of 
the  antislavery  conflict  had  reached  him  in  those 
troubled  days,  lifted  him  from  his  moorings  in  that 
quiet  haven,  and  set  him  afloat  upon  a  wider  and 
lonelier  voyage.  In  the  five  years  that  followed, 
of  his  residence  in  Jersey  City,  he  sometimes  gave 
expression  to  a  somewhat  forlorn  sense  of  solitude,  as 
if  he  either  did  not  find  the  field  of  work  congenial, 
or  else  had  come  to  feel  that  no  constructive  and  sat- 
isfying outside  work  was  to  be  done  in  it ;  so  that 
it  is  easy  to  imagine  that  the  experience  was  some- 
thing like  an  experience  of  exile.  Still,  they  were 
years  possibly  the  most  needed  and  fruitful  of  all, 
to  save  him  (if  ever  there  were  danger)  from  grow- 
ing into  a  mere  man  of  letters  or  a  mere  platform 
orator,  —  years  that  made  him,  instead,  a  conse- 
crated scholar,  a  well-equipped  as  well  as  eloquent 
interpreter  of  advancing  thought  in  many  of  its 
higher  ranges.  Of  the  evidences  of  this  growth, 
among  the  first  and  ablest  was  his  exposition,  in 
1858,  of  the  great  critical  work  of  Baur,  which  gave 
the  earliest  clear  indication  of  the  ground  he  held 
firmly,  ever  after,  in  the  disputed  province  of  his- 
torical criticism.  Here,  too,  in  a  series  of  note- 
worthy papers,  he  first  proved  his  mastery  of  the 
extraordinary  fluency,  ease,  vigor,  and  brilliant 
touch  which  marked  his  literary  handling  of  topics 
that  in  most  men's  hands  lie  quite  outside  the  pale 
of  literature. 

The   large  opportunity  of  his    life  and   the  full 
assertion  of  his  powers  came  with  his  removal  to 


OCTAYirs   BROOKS   FBOTHINGHAK. 

New  Fork   in    I860.     The  story  of  his  work  here 
should  I"-  told  by  some  one  wbo  knew  fa 
that  remarkable  group  in  which  he  w 
leader,  and  could  report  first-hand  of  a  movement 
that  will  be  better  understood  and  more  significant 
trs  go  by.     The  persona]  qualities  he  brought 
to  bear  in  it  were  described  by  Mr.  Chadwi 
well-chosen  words  in  the  funeral  addre        I    enture 
to  add  to  tin's  estimate  only  a  few  points 
to  me  al  a  much  greater  distai  during  those 

I    jaw  little  "t"  Mr.  Prothingham  personally, 
and  heard  only  a  single  address  of  his  in  the  actual 
scene  of  his  ministration.     It 
as  he  is  well  known  to  have  been  a  i  in, — 

clear,  ready,  self  |  I  illy   Btudied,  but 

extemporaneous  in  delivery ;  forcible,  but  not  impas- 
sioned or  in  the  least  declamat  • 
than  vehement  or  es]  ecially  vigorous  in  grasp  ;  about 
an  hour  in  length;  in  Bubstance  an  exposition  of 
what  Oomte's  "  Religion  of  Humanity "  really  means, 
at  once  comprehensive,  critical,  and  sympathetic. 
It  seemed  to  imply  a  movement  of  positive  or  con- 
structive rather  than  merely  ■ .  and 
in  this  view  was  perhaps  a  fair  example  of  his 
ordinary  address.  It'  bo,  ;t  was  quite  too  purely 
intellectual,  too  destitute  of  appeal  to  feeling  oi 
to  imagination,  to  do  more  than  hint,  in  the  i 
of  practice,  the  possibilities  of  a  far-off  future.  It 
might  even  react,  in  sunn-  mind-,  toward  a  certain 
despondency  and  Bense  of  helplessn  sss.  I  wrote 
to  him  once,  expi  >m  iwhal  warmly  my  ap- 
preciation  of  what   he   was   doing,  and  of  his  own 


150  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

quality  as  a  leader  in  such  high  paths  ;  and  the 
first  words  of  his  reply  were,  "  What  good  angel 
inspired  you  just  then  to  write  just  that  letter  ? " 
implying  that  it  had  helped  lift  him  out  of  a  black 
pit  of  self-distrust  and  sense  of  failure.  The  "  thin 
sheet  of  ice,"  he  lamented  to  his  friend  Chadwick, 
was  too  effective  a  non-conductor  to  the  rays  of 
common  sympathy. 

It  was  very  likely  some  expression  of  this  feeling 
that  led  to  the  report,  when  he  left  New  York,  that 
he  confessed  his  effort  there  to  have  been  a  failure, 
even  if  he  did  not  react  into  a  conservative  shrink- 
ing from  it  as  something  false  and  wrong.  There 
is  no  reason  whatever  to  suppose  that  his  mind  as 
to  these  matters  was  altered  in  the  least.  Of  course 
he  understood  that  the  period  he  worked  in  was  a 
"  drift  period  in  theology,"  —  a  phrase  (by  the  way) 
sent  him,  as  title  and  text,  by  me  when  editor  of 
the  "  Christian  Examiner,"  and  wrought  by  him 
into  one  of  his  most  characteristic  essays ;  and, 
naturally  enough,  a  drift  period  is  not  just  the  time 
to  find  firm  standing-ground.  But  it  sets  its  own 
preparatory  task,  nevertheless.  And  that  task,  in 
his  hands,  was  honestly  and  ably  done,  not  needing 
(we  may  hope)  to  be  repeated  ;  while  the  conviction 
that  it  had  to  be  done  may  well  have  deepened  the 
sense  of  weariness  that  comes  in  looking  back  on 
the  patiently  trodden  way.  It  may,  too,  have 
deepened  the  grateful  sense  of  relief  and  repose 
with  which  one  reverts  at  sixty  to  tasks  more  quiet 
and  genial,  better  suited  to  his  advancing  years 
than  to  those  when  he  courted  the  stress  of  battle. 


Wirs    r.i  UNGHAK  151 

To    the    wearied    soldier    the    furlough    was    well 
earne  1. 

The  work  of  these  I  peaks  pleasantly 

for   itself.      The   wonder   was   that   the   hand   we 
th'>u"ht  tired  out    was  -till   bo  diligent,  deft,  and 
swift;  that  the  faculty  we  feared  was  permanently 
lamed  was  -till  so  prompt  and  adequate  to  what 
might  be  required.     I  had  occasion  once  to  su< 
his  name  as  biographer  and  editor  <>f  the  unfinished 
1    left   by   our  dearly   honoi 
in,  not   knowing  that  he  was  (probably)  the 
one  living  man  competent   to  tfa  9  ich  a 

memorial  as  that,  or  I   William  (  ban- 

ning ;  such  a   pair   of  thick,  lable 

volumes  as  those   which   tell   his 
!        q  Unitarianism  and  Unitarians  ;  such  a  - 

as   those  appearing  within  thi 
giving   no   hint    that    they    w  f   partial 

:         merit  and  frequent    invalidisi  might 

well  make  an  ample  record  of  a  literary  life  in  its 
noontide,  not  in  its  lingering  afternoon. 
A  word  might  here  be  said  to  t<dl  1,  I  and 

how  pleasant  was  the  companionship  i 
\  And  this  word  might  include  mention  of  a 

trait  which  his  friends  haw  noted  with  perhaps  as 
much  admiration  as  any  achievement  of  his  rohuster 
.  —  the  untiring  and  urtesy    of  his 

ling,   through    many   an   hour  that    must   have 
unspeakably  weary,  in   sessions   of   the 
ious   Assc  iation,  wh  ry   title   see: 

invite    what    is    most    formless    and    I  f    all 

modes  of  human  Bpeech.      If  any  such  quality  ever 


152  SOME   YOUNGEE   MEMORIES. 

did  appear  in  those  debates,  I  am  sure  that  no  one 
could  have  been  more  keenly  sensitive  of  it  than 
he,  though  that  fine  dissimulation  let  no  one  else 
suspect  it.  For  his  judgment  of  persons  as  well 
as  of  things  was  swift,  keen,  inevitable.  By  that 
bright  rapier  the  dearest  friend  or  the  dearest  foe 
was  sure  to  be  touched  in  the  one  vulnerable  spot. 
No  emotional  heat  ever  spoiled  the  temper  of 
his  shining  blade,  or  warped  its  straightforward 
thrust. 

This  group  of  contemporary  names  would  be 
greatly  incomplete  if  it  lacked  that  of  David  Atkins 
Wasson.  The  record  of  his  life  has  been  so  fully 
given  in  his  own  words  and  in  Mr.  Frothingham's 
memoir  that  little  needs  to  be  added  here.  His 
early  training,  "in  extreme  seclusion,  in  a  rocky 
peninsula  town  of  the  coast  of  Maine,"  was  widely 
different  from  those  yet  named.  We  heard  of  him 
first  as  the  young,  ardent,  poetic  "pastor  of  an 
Evangelical  Church  in  Groveland,  Mass ; "  but 
presently,  in  part  under  Theodore  Parker's  influ- 
ence, he  became  a  liberal  of  the  liberals,  and  was 
abruptly  dismissed  in  1852.  He  was  a  man  of  the 
strenuous  quality  we  soon  learned  to  honor.  If  I 
were  to  give  in  a  single  phrase  our  thought  of  him, 
it  would  be  that,  in  the  very  finest  and  highest 
sense,  he  was  our  example  of  a  Christian  Stoic. 
But  what  this  means,  I  must  let  him  show  in  his 
own  words,  taken  from  two  letters  written  in  the 
autumn  of  1876:  — 


DAVID    ATKINS    v.  153 

■  <  tar   people    must  have   such   a  deal  of  hoping ! 
Would  not  a  Little  plain  and  cheerful 
for  a  change  '.'     I  >h  n<  . 

shall  be   do  place  for  c  The   truth  ia 

that  the  American  appetite  t  into 

Lmerican  mind.     1 
ual    pastry   an  think   i  Bhabbily 

treated.     A    di<  t   oi    turnips  would   be   bel 
while,  until   *  ,.-k  to  an  a:  mpler 

things.     I  thank   the  provider   wh 
a  Liberal   repast  of   plain  neither   peppered 

with  sarcasm,  soured  with  misanthropy,  noi 
with  optimism.  .  .  .  <  tae'a  a orda  Bhould  b 
rim   of    gracious   not-saying.      His  tl  hould 

he  like  the  words  on  a  printed  page,  with  a  m 
of   w  bite  Bilence  about   t  hem.       I  many 

whose   Bpeech    not    onlj    baa   no    margin,   but 
quite  over  the  page  and  spills  itself  in1 

••  Four  Btatemenl  of  the  I  ing  ten- 

denciea  of  thought  is,  ^«»  faraa  I  am  qualified  to  judge, 

n<>t    only  just  as   an  indication  of  direction,  hut  in  the 

raresl  degree  adequate  and  felicitous.     I  I 

can    see    what,    ('.     means    in    Baying    t:  'not 

cheerful  reading.'  He  ia  partly  right.  The  fact 
described  ia  not,  in  every  aspect  of  it,  and  in  every 
mood  of  the  observer,  a  cheerful  one.  I  don't  per- 
ceive that  you  at  all  tried  t<>  dreSB  it  up.  and  make 
it  look  cheerful.     But  erfully  confronted  it, 

and  saw  and  said  what  it  is.  1  i  afesa  that  to  me 
the  univene,  as   one  must   now  ems   at  times 

appallingly  cold,  and  1  Look  hack  with  a  half-regret 

to  the  old  fireside  view  of  the  world,  so  snug  and 
warm,  with   its  good  Father  providing  for  every  want 


154  .SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

and  soothing  every  distress,  and  its  divine  or  semi- 
divine  major-domo  aiding  with  infinite  tender  care 
to  make  things  comfortable.  But  this  view  is  no 
longer  possible ;  and  besides,  I  am  clearly  of  opinion 
that  it  has  become  nearly  valueless  as  a  means  of 
moral  support.  At  any  rate,  I  must  bear  testimony 
for  myself  that  the  more  of  such  belief  I  spare,  the 
more  I  find  myself  morally  braced.  Take  the  belief 
in  personal  immortality,  for  example.  I  no  longer 
lean  upon  it,  and  find  it  wholesome  not  to  do  so.  I 
do  not  deny  it,  but  must  plant  the  foot  upon  what 
now  is,  not  upon  what  may  be  hereafter.  Indeed,  my 
experience  constantly  teaches  me  more  and  more  the 
virtue  of  abstinence  in  such  matters.  I  speak  only 
for  myself ;  the  case  may  be  different  with  others. 
And  yet,  with  the  doctrine  of  immortality  run  into 
spiritism,  who  can  help  doubting  its  use  in  the  imme- 
diate future  ?  It  may  one  day  be  re-born  and  come  out 
better  than  new.  In  the  mean  time,  duty  and  work  are 
enough ;  and  I  find  the  simple  diet  invigorating. 

"  It  seems  to  me,  then,  that  you  have  stated  the  fact 
as  it  is  ;  and  I  vote  with  you  for  the  '  cold  bath.'  " 

Mr.  Wasson  had  labored  for  some  years  on  what 
should  have  been  the  monumental  task  of  his  life,  a 
treatise  or  essay  of  political  ethics,  of  which  the 
earlier  chapters  were  published  with  Mr.  Frothing- 
ham's  memoir.  An  increasing  severity  of  judgment, 
and  perhaps  the  lack  of  buoyancy  of  spirits,  —  an 
effect  of  his  invalidism,  —  prevented  the  completion 
of  this  work,  to  the  great  disappointment  of  his 
friends.  The  languor,  and  the  disposition  to  look 
for  a  more  favorable  season,  characterizing  the  weary 
but  delusive  disease  of  which  he  died,  also  prevented 


DAVID    ATKINS    WAS*  155 

—  what  tin  y  urged  upon  him  more  than  once  —  the 
gathering  of  his  rare  but  choice  productions  in  verse 
into  a  single  volume.     The  last  work  of  his 

ited  with  great  difficulty  and  delay  hy  n 
of  partial  blindni  .Mr.  Adams's 

u Emancipation  of  Massachusetts;"  and,  as  to  this, 
1  happened  to  know  that  he  felt  more  than  once 
unequal  to  the  effort,  and  even  begged  a  friend  to 
take  the  Bheets  of  the  book  and  complete  the  task 
for  him.  Bis  writings  have  appeared  in  various 
journals;  some  of  the  best,  I  Bhould  Buppoee,  in  the 
"  Radical ;"  but  the  finest  of  I  I    an  recall, 

in  though!  and  >t  \  1<\  i  ( Christian 

Examiner,"  published  during  or  near  the  time  of  the 
War.  Hi-  title,  "The  Sword  in  Ethics,"  and  a  re- 
view  of  tli''  care  ir  "i  Wendell  Phillips,  may  perhaps 
recall   to  brilliant  and  strong 

In  a  Letter  of  March,  l  363,  hi  "If  1 

write  three  hours  a  day  for  three  days  in  succession, 
I  am  utterly  pi  1.     I  ha  1  lying  down, 

ami  must    pay  for  every  hour  of  work  or  plaj 
more  than  an  hour  of  extreme  pain.     Therefi       I 
am  slow."     But  that  effort  was  the  one  great  privi- 

for  which  no  cost  was  too  dear. 
The  physical  affliction  fn>m  which  he  Buffered 
through  most  of  his  life  has  been  rightly  stated  t«» 
ha  due  t<>  an  injury  t<>  tin-  Bpine  in  hi-  early  youth. 
But,  as  false  tali'-  have  been  circulated  a-  to  what 
occasioned  it.  —  one  of  them,  told  in  print,  that  it 
was  the  cruelty  of  a  shipmaster  under  whom  he 
served,  —  it  seems  tit  that  the  correct  account  should 
1h>  criven. 


156  SOME   YOUNGER   MEMORIES. 

I  called  upon  him  about  three  months  before  his 
death,  and  found  that  he  had  suffered  for  about  a 
month  from  an  attack  which  severely  affected  his 
lungs  (as  was,  indeed,  very  evident),  so  that  his 
family  were  apprehending  then  the  rapid  decline 
that  followed.  When  I  asked  him  of  his  condition, 
he  said  he  thought  it  was  "  the  old  trouble,"  not 
knowing  the  judgment  of  the  physician.  I  then 
said  I  had  heard  a  certain  "  myth  "  as  to  the  cause 
of  that  trouble,  and  asked  him  how  much  of  it  wTas 
true.  He  answered,  None  at  all.  The  real  cause 
was  this :  He  was,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  though 
not  large  in  person,  very  vigorous  and  athletic,  and, 
in  particular,  an  alert  and  powerful  wrestler.  It 
chanced  that,  at  some  local  gathering  in  the  political 
campaign  of  1840,  he  was  challenged  to  "  try  a  fall " 
by  a  powerful  young  fellow,  over  six  feet  tall,  of  a 
quarrelsome  clan  ;  and,  knowing  the  folly  of  it,  at 
first  refused.  Under  great  pressure,  he  at  length 
consented,  on  condition  of  having  the  usual  advan- 
tage yielded  to  the  smaller  man,  —  putting  both 
arms  below  those  of  his  antagonist,  —  which  was, 
however,  denied.  Then,  for  more  than  an  hour,  he 
submitted  manfully  to  the  taunts  of  the  crowd,  till 
it  was  offered  that  the  two  should  stand  as  cham- 
pions of  their  respective  parties,  when,  in  an  evil 
moment,  his  better  resolution  gave  way.  Two  falls 
out  of  three  would  give  the  victory.  His  opponent 
at  first,  as  he  expected,  tried  by  leaping  on  him  to 
crush  him  by  sheer  weight ;  but  he  "  knew  a  trick 
worth  two  of  that,"  and  brought  him  in  an  instant 
to  the  ground.     Then  they  grappled ;  and,  clasping 


DAVID    ATKINS    \  157 

liis  hands   behind  Wasson'a  back,   the    other  tried 

to  bend  him  double.     It  was  a  d< 

Bat, by  a  violent  effort,  out  young   David  foiled  his 

big  antagonist,  and  threw  him  a  Becond  time  to  the 

ground,  —  aa  he  believed  al  the  time,  at  t 

hia  own  life  ;  and,  indeed,  for  a  fortnight  after  he 

could  ii"t  bo  much  aa  turn  himself  in  bed 

The  life-long  consequences  of  this  terrible  wrench, 
and  its  effect,  in  particular,  in  crippling  that  bril- 
liant and  vigorous  to  justify  the  telling 
of  this  Btory  in  detail.  The  Buffering  and  Q] 
however,  did  nol  prevent  many  a  sturdy  disp] 
force  in  the  exacting  labors  of  public  oratory,  any 
than  the  patient  and  him- 
sclt'  as  writer  and  thinker,  [ndeed,  no  very  serious 
alteration  in  health  waa  manifest  till  within  some 
six  years,  or  thereabout,  when  hia  increasing  blind- 
brought  its  special  symptoms  of  infirmity.  An 
operation  for  cataract,  in  the  spring 
very  successful  in  restoring  the  r. 
which  wa<,  however,  imperfect,  having  been  hurt  by 
the  Btroke  of  a  cow's  born  in  boyhood,  bo  that  it 
seemed  expedient  to  repeat  the  operation  on  the 
other  eye.  This,  most  unfortunately,  resulted  in 
the  destruction  of  the  organ  and  a  summer's  sickness 
with  much  Buffering,  and  a  permanent  lowering  of 
eneral  health.  It  was  under  these  infirmities 
—  with  the  alleviation  of  friends,  books,  and  the 
skilful  culture  of  his  little  vineyard  —  that  the  iast 
victories  of  his  life  were  won.  lie  died  on  the 
twenty-first  of  January,   L887. 


Robcrls  Brothers    Publications. 


OUR    LIBERAL    MOVEMENT 
IN  THEOLOGY, 

Chiefly  as  shown  in  Recollections  of  the  History  of  Tni- 

tarianism  in  New  England 

Lectures  ^iven  in  the  Harvard  Divinity  SchooL 

By  JOSEPH    HENRY   am  i  \. 

Lecturer  M 

"lid  edition.     l6mO.     <  'loth.      1': 


■  It  is  a  i c \  i •  w  of  the  history  and 

rlanism,  interspei  u  <l  witl 

with  .m  appri  the  t'  ndeni  a  a  lib*  ral  th 

•  of  the  ful 

"  The  tirst  five    I 
skit< li  .mil  criticism  of  the  history  of   Unitarianism   in    N 
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rific  Theology,' '  The  R<  ligkn  i  f  Humanity,1  and  '  1 1.  •  ■ 
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is,  and  how  it  came  to  be  what  it  i-. 

"  The  cha]  forming,  at. 

tin-  writ  that   in  which   he  1 

and  does  n.'t  allow  himself  to  drift  far  from  bis  subject.     Th 
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CHRISTIAN     HISTORY 

IN   ITS   THREE    GREAT   PERIODS. 

By  JOSEPH    HENRY  ALLEN, 

Late  Lecturer  on  Ecclesiastical  History  in  Harvard  University. 


First  Period.     "EARLY  CHRISTIANITY.'*  — 

Topics:  i.  The  Messiah  and  the  Christ;  2.  Saint  Paul; 
3.  Christian  Thought  of  the  Second  Century ;  4.  The  Mind 
of  Paganism;  5.  The  Arian  Controversy;  6.  Saint  Augus- 
tine; 7.  Leo  the  Great;  8.  Monasticism  as  a  Moral  Force; 

9.  Christianity  in  the  East ;  10.  Conversion  of  the  Barba- 
rians ;  11.  The  Holy  Roman  Empire;  12.  The  Christian 
Schools. 

Second    Period.     "THE    MIDDLE    AGE." — 

Topics:  i.  The  Ecclesiastical  System;  2.  Feudal  Society; 
3.  The  Work  of  Hildebrand  ;  4.  The  Crusades  ;  5.  Chiv- 
alry ;  6.  The  Religious  Orders  ;  7.  Heretics  ;  8.  Scholastic 
Theology;  9.  Religious  Art;  10.  Dante;  11.  The  Pagan 
Revival. 

Third  Period.  "  MODERN  PHASES."  —  Topics  : 
I.  The  Protestant  Reformation  ;  2.  The  Catholic  Reaction  ; 
3.  Calvinism  ;  4.  The  Puritan  Commonwealth ;  5.  Port 
Royal;  6.  Passage  from  Dogma  to  Philosophy;  7.  English 
Rationalism;  8.  Infidelity  in  France  ;  9.  The  German  Critics; 

10.  Speculative  Theology  ;   11.  The  Reign  of  Law. 

Each  volume  contains  a  Chronological  Outline  of  its  Period,  with  a 
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Volume  I.  ("Early  Christianity")  is,  with  a  few  additions,  —  the  most 
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HEBREW  MEN  AND  TIMES 

FROM   THE 

patrtantw  to  tftr  jRmtefy. 

JOSEPH    HENRY   all: 

Lecturer  on  F.k  li:m.\stical  History  i\   Harvari-  L'mversity. 
Edition,  with  an  Introduction  on  tL  |    recent  Old 

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Topics,    i.  The    Patriarch*;  The     Jod 

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andrians;    12.  The  Messiah. 

:   1  clear, 
brief  sketch,  or  out! 

suits  of  scholarship  ;   tli.it 
.ions,    without    l>ei: 

as,  or  1 

pendencc  of  scholarly  thought, 

while  it  shou! 

Such  a  want  as  this  the  \  1 

A"< '  ;-r. 

ed  to  have  excited  interest  enough  in  the  theme  to  induce 
readers  to  take  up  Mr  Alien's  admirable  book  and  ma-  through  all  the  richness 
and  variety  oi  his  detail  the  eventful  hist    •  brew  thou;;!  I 

with  which  we  have  no  fault   to  hud  save  the  very  uncommon  fault  of  | 
crowded  and  too  few,  mnO  throej  light  on  many  thii  p  which  must  be  Bit 
now  to  the  unlearned  mind;  they  will  also  revive  the  declining  respect  for  a  ven- 
erable people,  and  f.>r  a  faith  to  which  we  owe  much  more  than  some  of  us  suspect. 
For,  however  untrammelled   Mr.  Allen's  criticism  may  be,  his  thought  is  always 
serious  and  reverential.     And  the  -  it  their 

author  has  cleared  away  many  obstructions  in  :' 

that  he  has  only  made  freer  the  access  to  the  balk  of  faith.     There  is  no  light  or 
■nbecooring  ■entente  in   the  volume.     There  is  no  insincere  paragraph. 
There  is  no  heedless  line.     And  this  perhaps  ■  rentes!  charms  of  the 

book  ;  for  it   is  ran-   indeed   that   both   intellect  and   I  A.th  the 

same  letters." 

Sold  everywhere  by  all  I ksdlers.     Mailed,  post-paid,  by  the 

publishers 

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Messrs.   Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 


Outline  of  Christian  History. 

A.  D.  50-1880. 

By  JOSEPH  HENRY  ALLEN, 

Author  of  "  Hebrew  Men  and  Times,'1''  "  Christian  History  in  its  Thret 
Great  Periods  ?  "  Our  Liberal  Movemeiit  in  Theology"  etc. 

i6mo,  Cloth.         Price,  75  Cents. 

This  "Outline"  is  designed  by  Mr.  Allen,  primarily,  as  a  manual 
for  class  instruction.  It  is  printed  in  different  sizes  of  type,  and  the 
twelve  chapters  are  to  be  studied  as  so  many  lessons,  using  only  the  por- 
tions in  the  larger  type,  —  in  which  the  general  scheme  or  course  of  events 
are  clearly  stated,  —  after  which  particular  periods  may  be  studied  in  more 
detail.  It  is  a  very  valuable  epitome,  not  a  history,  and  will  be  found  a 
useful  guide  to  more  extended  study  of  Christian  history.  The  topics 
selected  as  lessons  are  the  Messianic  Period,  the  Martyr  Age,  Age  of  Con- 
troversies and  Creeds,  the  Church  and  Barbarians,  the  Church  and  Feudal- 
ism, Dawn  of  the  Modern  Era,  the  Reformations,  Wars  of  Religion,  the 
English  Puritans,  Modern  Christianity,  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  an 
Index  of  Topics  and  Names.  —  Journal  of  Education. 

The  little  work,  as  its  title  indicates,  is  designed  as  a  manual  for  class 
instruction  on  the  origin,  growth,  and  principles  of  Christianity  from  its 
foundation  to  the  present  time.  It  consists  of  twelve  chapters,  and  each 
chapter  is  devoted  to  one  particular  epoch  of  Christian  history.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  carefully  and  skilfully  compiled  volumes  of  religious  history  we 
have  yet  seen,  and  will  be  found  invaluable  to  students,  old  as  well  as 
young.  — .  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

It  would  seem  impossible  to  cover  such  a  space  with  so  limited  a 
manual,  but  it  is  happily  and  ably  accomplished  by  Mr.  Allen.  His 
three  or  four  historical  compendiums  of  ecclesiastical  events  are  well  known. 
The  present  handbook  forms  an  admirable  text-book  for  a  class  of  young 
people  in  ecclesiastical  history,  and  will  afford  to  any  reader  a  good  idea  of 
the  progress  of  the  Christian  Church,  with  its  most  noted  names  and  de- 
nominational families,  during  the  whole  period  from  the  first  century  down 
to  our  days..  There  seems  to  be  a  marked  fairness  in  the  condensed  sketches 
of  men  of  different  sects  and  their  special  religious  movements.  It  is  cer- 
tainly a  useful  little  manual.  —  Zion's  Herald. 


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by  the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS  BROTHERS,  Boston. 


jlfcssrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 

POSITIVE   RELIGION. 

ESSAYS,    FRAGMENTS,     \NI>     HINTS. 
fi  >SEPH    HENRY    A I  ! 

Author  of  •'  Christian  1 1  ;od>," 

•'  H.  brew  Men  and  I 

I6MO.       CLOTH.       PRICE,     $1.25. 

NBg   the    subjects    treated    tiny    be    noted    the    following,   vi/.  : 

ligions,"  "  The   I  .1  Future   I 

"  The  Bright  Sid< 

Christi 

at  tlw  e- 

ot  pain,  ol  unmi  1 1 

known  df  th 

common  in  i 

This  little  viiIum 

lement   in  • 
even  i 

hie,  and  the  work  1 
\  »1 

themes  of  religion.    M 

him  in  his  1 

fruition  in  the  lives 

.v.  r  r 

Mr.  Alhn  strikes  straight  out  from  the 
ttural  force  not  only  unabati  1.  but 
Sixty  :    \    New  \ 

years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind.     B 
we  ma  must  make  .\n  arbitrar 

admiration  for  the  splendid  force  and  beaut]  ot  mai 

the  product  of  no  artifice,  hut  are  uniformly  an  inanity 

which  is  the  writer's  constant  end  and  inspiration.      In  pro; 
free  and  full  irmth  and  I 

jive  an   intellectual  pleasure,  hut  make  the  heart  leap  up  with   - 
courage  and  resolve.  —  J.  N 

Sol  i 

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FREDERIC  HENRY  HEDGE'S  WRITINGS. 


EEASON  IN  EELIGION. 

Introductory.  —  Being  and  Seeing,  "  Natural  and  Spiritual." 
Book  First.  —  Religion  within  the  Bounds  of  Theism. 
Book  Second.  —  Rational  Christianity. 

Fourth  edition.     i6mo.     Cloth.     Price  $t.$Q. 

THE  PRIMEVAL  WOELD  OF  HEBEEW  TEADITION. 

I.  The  World  a  Divine  Creation;  II.  Man  the  Image  of  God; 
III.  Man  in  Paradise;  IV.  The  Brute  Creation;  V.  Paradise 
Lost ;  VI.   Cain,  or  Property  and  Strife  as  Agents  in  Civilization  ; 

VII.  Nine  Hundred  and  Sixty-Nine  Years;  VIII.  The  Failure  of 
Primeval  Society;  IX.  The  Deluge  ;  X.  Jehovah  and  Abraham; 
XII.    The  Heritage  of  the  Inner  Life. 

Second  edition .     1 6m  o.     Cloth .     Price  $  1 .  50. 

WAYS  OF  THE  SPIEIT,  AND   OTHEE  ESSAYS. 

I.  The  Way  of  History ;  II.  The  Way  of  Religion ;  III.  The 
Way  of  Historic  Christianity  ;  IV.  The  Way  of  Historic  Atone- 
ment; V.  The  Natural  History  of  Theism;  VI.  Critique  of 
Proofs  of  the  Being   of   God ;    VII.    On  the  Origin  of    Things ; 

VIII.  The  God  of  Religion,  or  the  Human  God  ;  IX.  Dualism 
and  Optimism;  X.  Pantheism;  XL  The  Two  Religions;  XII. 
The  Mythical  Element  of  the  New  Testament;  XIII.  Incarna- 
tion and  Transubstantiation  ;  XIV.    The  Human  Soul. 

Second  edition.     \6mo.     Cloth.     Price  $1.50. 


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BOSTON. 


_m 


mm 


